Yesterdays sale of the Washington Post is exhibit one of what Washington DC is about. Washington DC is all about Washington DC.
Sure, the Washington Post is a prominent paper and while its purchase by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is certainly a legitimate news story it is not a worldshaking development that deserves extended frontpage coverage. But look how the Washington Post, which still believes itself to be some serious news outlet, reports on its change of ownership.
This is the current Washington Post homepage with 12(!) stories on the issue and very little else:
And here is the paper editions frontpage, again nothing else but its change of ownership:
Washington DC, to the politicians, lobbyists and media there, is all about themselves. How can one take a news media seriously when its obsession with itself trumps anything else that is happening in this world?
Even worse, in all the Washington Post coverage the real story and question is left out.
The growth of Amazon from a garage bookselling website into an online retail mammoth was heavily subsidized by the U.S. taxpayers. While local retail business had to pay local and state sales tax, Amazon and other "virtual" businesses did not do so. They could therefore offer lower consumer prices for their products than the local storefront retail businesses could.
The negative effects of this subside were threefold. Local storefront business could not compete with Amazon and had to close with their workers becoming unemployed. Sure, in some places Amazon also created some jobs. But those were concentrated rather brutal and low paying warehouse jobs instead of qualified local sales personal. States and local communities that relied on sales taxes had to make up the $11 billion shortfall per year elsewhere or cut back in their services. With online sales growing and local sales in decline Amazon, like Ebay and a few others, are gaining near monopoly positions which will allow them to press for lower wholesale prices while increasing their consumer prices.
The completely unjustified tax subsidy for Amazon has cost the U.S. public dearly. That leads to the question of why Jeff Bezos would buy a dying paper like the Washington Post.
None of the pieces on its frontpage really analyzes that questions.
It could be that Bezos is looking for synergies between Amazon and a nation wide newspaper. But it might also be because he is simply buying a most effective lobbying shop that will allow him to influence in Congress and to have a say on how an internet sales tax, should it pass Congress at all, might get implemented. There are also some court cases in which a backing from the Washington Post might help Amazon to win.
Bezos is not a raider but a long term investor. But he is still seaking rofits not the public interest. It remains to be seen if he wants to makes these profits through a genuine interesting news product, the Washington Post of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate fame, or through using it for lobbying or as a byproduct for his main businesses.
The selfish coverage by the Washington Post of its change of ownership does not make one optimistic that a true journalistic route is in the offering.