The Washington Post is doing something weird for depressing reasons
I think you can already guess it
Hi Friends. I don’t like to email people more than once a week, so I’m not sending this out newsletter style, but just publishing it here.
It seems to have escaped many people’s notice, but I randomly happened upon this Verge article today which I find deeply puzzling.
Relevant backstory is that Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and sometimes spaceman, bought the Washington Post some years ago. In 2024, the Post was going to endorse Kamala Harris for President, as many newspapers do endorsements. Bezos decided just before the election that the post would no longer do endorsements. In Februrary of 2025, Bezos also decided that the Post’s opinion pages would solely focus on columns “defending personal liberties and the free market” and that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” So we will celebrate the free market by limiting the free market, cool.
Anyhoo, a few days ago the New York Times ran this piece about Ripple, this new… thing..? coming to the Post.
A new initiative aims to sharply expand that lineup [of opinion writers], opening The Post to many published opinion articles from other newspapers across America, writers on Substack and eventually nonprofessional writers, according to four people familiar with the plan… The project will host and promote the outside opinion columns on The Post’s website and app but outside its paywall… For years, Mr. Bezos has also urged leaders at The Post to embrace aggregation, the practice of summarizing and linking to journalism published by other outlets, to attract additional readers. [you know that thing that led to the list of fake summer books being published]. .. Will Lewis, The Post’s chief executive, has been looking for new ways to reduce costs at the company while finding new sources of revenue. Last year, The Post created a road map to guide its efforts, with focus areas including artificial intelligence, new products and personalization. .. Ember, the A.I. writing coach being developed by The Post, could automate several functions normally provided by human editors, the people said. Early mock-ups of the tool feature a “story strength” tracker that tells writers how their piece is shaping up, with a sidebar that lays out basic parts of story structure: “early thesis,” “supporting points” and “memorable ending.” A live A.I. assistant would provide developmental questions, with writing prompts inviting authors to add “solid supporting points,” one of the people said.
What on earth is going on here? It kind of sounds like the Post wants a low-cost, low effort way to drive traffic to its site and that they way they think they can do this is by copying Medium and Substack, so that instead of publishing on my own site (potentially to my own profit) I would submit my slop to an AI which would then publish it to the Post’s Medium Opinion page. The reference to “writers on Substack and eventually nonprofessional writers..” is particularly weird.. I mean I guess I am a professional writer, but I think the majority of writers on Substack are “nonprofessional” and also a HUGE percentage of people writing on opinion pages of newspapers in general.
Do ya’ll really think this will create revenue? We all know that rage-pieces drive traffic for newspapers, but I think people have increasingly wisened up to this AND it has resulted in many people cancelling their newspapers subscriptions. I do think people will shell out money for opinion pieces— people do it every day on Substack, but I think this is with readers who read someone’s free content many times before converting over—they’ve made an investment in a particular author whose content they like and want to continually receive. I’m unlikely to send any money to the Post because of an AI-edited piece written by some angry person with a choice ragey opinion like “maybe women are bad at jobs.” I was already angry about even the idea of AI editing grammar, but the notion it can do developmental editing is beyond laughable.
Anyhow, I hope everyone is enjoying another week of club shit sandwich, where every week there is a little more bread and a little more shit.