The consequences of not supporting Kamala Harris The Washington Post is here: more than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR reports. That's about 8 percent of the paying subscriber base, and the number of cancellations continues to rise.
To put that in perspective, in an Oct. 15 story about post CEO Will Lewis' strategy to get more paying subscribers The New York Times reported that the post had gained 4,000 subscribers since the beginning of 2024 through September. I'm actually amazed: This is fifty times as many cancellations in one weekend as The post earned in the better part of a year.
“This is clearly an attempt by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in anticipation of his possible victory.”
Now there were several reports at this point – from NPR, The Columbia Journalism ReviewAnd The Washington Post himself – that the call to stop supporting candidates came from Jeff Bezos himself. On the same day as Lewis' bizarre announcement of The post Executives from Bezos' space company Blue Origin met with presidential candidate Donald Trump without consent.
I guess I should mention the various government contracts that Bezos' other companies have – including Amazon's $10 billion NSA contract and Blue Origin's $3.4 billion NASA contract. Trump has targeted Bezos before The Washington Post Reporting. A columnist who left post Of the decision, Robert Kagan told CNN: “This is obviously an attempt by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in anticipation of his possible victory.” Kagan pointed to the business contracts as motivation.
Lewis wants us to leave poor Bezos alone. Bezos “was not sent to, did not read, or commented on any draft,” the CEO told CNN in a statement that we in the industry know as a non-denial denial. That is – it is a carefully worded recitation of the things Bezos has done not Do. There is no denying that Bezos called for no support. And today, The New York Times' Ben Mullin reported that Bezos had already expressed reservations about supporting the president in September.
Bezos made his name at Amazon by relentlessly focusing on customer satisfaction. He repeatedly urged people to focus on making customers happy. Here's a funny quote from his 2016 letter to shareholders:
There are many ways to center a company. You can focus on competition, you can focus on product, you can focus on technology, you can focus on business model, and there's more. But in my opinion, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective factor for vitality from day one.
That's probably good advice for running a business, and it appears to be advice that neither Lewis nor Bezos themselves followed. By boosting the president's support, Bezos created the appearance of a conflict of interest – and in journalism, that's just as bad as an actual conflict of interest, because you've now lost the trust of your audience.
(However, Lewis is no stranger to journalism, having experience as an editor. However, some of that experience is explored in the Sunday Times phone hacking scandal, so he may not be the best person to contact on these matters.)
The setback is greater than The post
But if there's one thing Bezos is known for, it's his ruthless approach to capitalism. And here too he failed. Customers have been very vocal: NPR reports that three of the top 10 stories on the Post's website Sunday, employees were angry about the support being killed. The most-read post was from the paper's popular humorist, Alexandra Petri: “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to support Harris for president.” When I checked The postBack on the site today, the top two stories centered around the controversy.
The setback is greater than The post. One thing our tech overlords have been very unhappy about recently has been the administration's renewed approach to antitrust under Joe Biden. What the post Among the highlights of the scandal, aside from Will Lewis' incompetence, is precisely the number of companies Bezos owns and the way conflicts of interest could arise. He skillfully managed to make the average citizen aware of the excesses of power in the economy. There is, of course, a solution: breaking up companies that have become too big.
Well, I think that's a lesson for all of us. This is what happens when you focus on yourself and not your customers. Not only will they leave you in droves, they may even denigrate you enough to be politically dangerous.