Just two days after owner Jeff Bezos declared that Washington Post editorials would henceforth focus on “personal liberties and free markets,” the new way of doing things faced a tough stress test. It was an inauspicious debut.

The Oval Office blowup that ended with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy being shown the White House door was the sort of big and totally unexpected news that demanded comment. The Post responded later Friday in an editorial with some loosely linked on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand thoughts, faulting both President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy.

Nothing particularly impressive or offensive in the piece. The Wall Street Journal editorial and the Post’s foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius took a similar tack, slamming Trump but arguing that Zelenskyy got too combative.

What startled me was the headline: “In acrimonious meeting, Trump berates Zelenskyy.” Even with opinion editor David Shipley departed and the department’s editing ranks depleted, shouldn’t someone have noticed they were going with a news story headline on an opinion piece? That distinction seems like Journalism 101.

Also, as of Monday evening, the Post has run just two editorials in four days — a departure from its typical standard of at least one a day.

Most commentary on the Bezos manifesto has speculated on whether the personal freedom and free markets agenda is his own credo, a sop to Trump or some of both. I’m wondering now whether it will create an overly narrow set of boundaries for Post editorial writers in choosing topics and what to say.

Is there an echo here of an old Woody Allen joke? Two little old ladies at a nursing home are talking. “The food here is terrible,” one says. The other replies, “and such small portions.”

By media business analyst Rick Edmonds

The Post has lost more than 75,000 subscribers in the wake of Bezos’ changes to its opinion pages, NPR reported Friday. The wave of cancellations follows a much larger one in October when Bezos spiked a planned endorsement for then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The Post did grow its subscriber base by 400,000 in the interim — many at “highly discounted rates” — according to NPR, but the net effect of Bezos’ meddling is a loss of a “couple hundred thousand” subscribers.

Post journalists have also been jumping ship. Caroline Kitchener, who won a Pulitzer for her abortion coverage at the Post, became the latest, announcing Monday that she’s headed to The New York Times to cover the Trump administration’s impact on American families.

By media business reporter Angela Fu

• Legendary newspaper editor Martin Baron has a new piece out in The Atlantic: “Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post.” We hate to quote just one section from an important piece, so we encourage you to read the whole thing. Baron knows what he’s talking about. He worked for Bezos at the Post before retiring in 2021.
• And here’s a Q&A that Baron did with Mediaite’s Kathryn Wilkens.
• This is the kind of PR that just looks horrible for the Post. Axios’ Jaden Amos reported late last week: “Trump says he had dinner with Bezos week of Washington Post changes.”

Kari Lake speaks at a campaign rally, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

Multiple journalists at Voice of America, a government-funded but editorially independent broadcaster, are under investigation for making comments critical of President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported Friday.

One of those journalists, chief national correspondent Steve Herman, has been placed on leave while a human resources investigation determines whether his “social media activity has undermined V.O.A.’s audiences’ perceptions of the objectivity and/or credibility of V.O.A. and its news operations.”

Last month, Herman faced criticism from the Trump administration for an X post that read, “Eliminating USAID ‘makes Americans less safe at home and abroad,’ says Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward.” The post linked to a longer thread on social media platform Mastadon that contained reporting about a lawsuit filed over the elimination of the United States Agency for International Development.

Voice of America has also killed or watered down multiple articles containing criticism of the Trump administration, reporters told the Times. Some speculated that the outlet’s decision Friday to reassign White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara to a different beat was another attempt to appease the Trump administration.

Voice of America is a part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, to which Trump has nominated conservative activist and writer L. Brent Bozell as CEO. Bozell has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. Trump’s pick to lead Voice of America, former television news anchor Kari Lake, is also waiting to be officially installed. Lake, who unsuccessfully ran for office in Arizona twice as a Republican, must be approved by the board overseeing USAGM. In the meantime, she is serving as a senior adviser to the agency.

Trump’s decision to elevate Bozell and Lake is just one of his administration’s many efforts to influence media coverage by favoring conservative voices.

In January, the Federal Communications Commission reopened complaints against CBS, ABC and NBC but not Fox News.

In February, the Pentagon took away office spaces from multiple mainstream outlets like CNN and NPR and reassigned those spaces to right-wing outlets like One America News Network and Breitbart.

That month, the Trump administration also took control of the White House press pool, reducing the number of spots available to wire services from three to one.

The day after the change was announced, the White House gave spots in the pool to conservative outlets Newsmax and The Blaze.

By media business reporter Angela Fu

• What is it with billionaire newspaper owners tinkering with opinion pages? The Guardian’s Lois Beckett writes, “LA Times to display AI-generated political rating on opinion pieces.” It has already led to some awkward copy (to put it extremely mildly).
• For The New York Times Magazine, business investigations editor David Enrich asks a dire question for the press: “Can the Media’s Right to Pursue the Powerful Survive Trump’s Second Term?” “New York Times v. Sullivan and other landmark Supreme Court decisions protect the press’s ability to investigate public figures,” Enrich’s subhed reads. “But a growing right-wing movement seeks to overturn them.”
• Three days after the Trump administration announced it would pick which reporters attend press pools instead of the White House Correspondents’ Association, a member of Russia’s state-owned news agency was mistakenly allowed to cover an Oval Office press conference. The White House selected the journalists who were in attendance for what became a contentious meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Among them was a correspondent for TASS, a Russian state media organization, CNN’s Donald Judd and Liam Reilly report. “TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official told CNN in a statement. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary.”
• Now it’s official. Eugene Daniels is leaving Politico to become senior Washington correspondent for MSNBC. He will also be a co-host of “The Weekend” on Saturdays and Sundays from 7 to 10 a.m. alongside veteran MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart. There were reports last week that the move would happen, and it became official on Monday during MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
• Lee Enterprises, the owner of 77 daily newspapers across the U.S., has been dealing with a particularly hairy cyberattack for weeks. Subscribers have reported missing newspapers, issues with the publication’s online portal and disrupted website access. Now, SecurityWeek reports, a ransomware group claims it has obtained a large trove of files from Lee’s systems, including “investor records, financial arrangements that raise questions, payments to journalists and publishers, funding for tailored news stories, and approaches to obtaining insider information.”
• Did you see Sunday night’s Academy Awards? Not especially memorable, but not bad either. Conan O’Brien did a solid job as host and managed to avoid controversy — which is considered a good night when you host the Oscars. “Anora” was the big winner with five Oscars, including Best Picture. Adrien Brody won for Best Actor and had to be played off twice because his speech ran long, and that apparently caused issues with Hulu’s coverage.
• For more on the Oscars, here’s The New York Times with “Best and Worst Moments From the 2025 Oscars.” And here’s the Los Angeles Times with “The top 8 takeaways from the 2025 Oscars, according to those who were there.”
• Here’s more about how the contract between Major League Baseball and ESPN is ending following this season, as well as what’s next for the MLB. It’s The Wall Street Journal’s Jared Diamond and Isabella Simonetti with “MLB Plots a New TV Model After Striking Out With ESPN.”
• Pro Football Hall of Fame and two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Jimmy Johnson announced Monday that he is retiring from broadcasting after 31 years at Fox Sports. The 81-year-old had been a regular on the Sunday pregame studio show, “Fox NFL Sunday,” since the program debuted in 1994. Johnson made the announcement on Colin Cowherd’s FS1 show, saying, “I’ve made an extremely difficult decision. I’ve been thinking about it for the last four or five years, and I’ve decided to retire from Fox.” He added, “Probably the most fun I’ve ever had in my career — and that’s counting Super Bowls and national championships — was at Fox Sports. I have an absolute ball with my friends on the set. The best friends I’ve ever had, there with Fox. … I’m gonna miss it.”
• The New York Times’ Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs with “Gene Hackman Was Their Most Famous Neighbor. They Rarely Saw Him.”
• One last thing today in case you missed it on Monday. To celebrate Poynter’s 50th anniversary, we have launched The Poynter 50 — a yearlong look at 50 consequential people, events and moments that shaped 50 years of media. Here’s the story about the launch, as well as the first part of the series from Tom Jones about CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm: “The night the skies over Baghdad were illuminated, the 24-hour news cycle took over.”

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