← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Bulwark. I'm Will Sommer, joined today by Max Tanny. He's a media editor at Semaphore and the co host of the Mixed Signals podcast on media. And the reason we had to bring in Max is because you know what, there's drama again at the Washington Post and no one knows it better than Max. And so, Max, what is the latest coming out of the Post? The House of Bezos. There's trouble afoot.
- [00:24]
B
Well, I, I, you know, I should, I feel like, give a little caveat there because I feel like, you know it pretty well as someone who used to, to work. No, there was a big development today. The Post has actually been a little bit quiet recently compared to some of the other major legacy media players that have been, you know, undergoing some major changes, places like cbs. But today, the opinion editor of the Post, Adam o', Neill, announced that he was resigning at the end of August. This is really interesting and struck people as, as somewhat notable because Adam, of course, was the opinion editor who came in to replace David Shipley after he resign mind over essentially not wanting to make changes to the opinion section that Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, wanted to make. Adam was the first editor who was supposed to kind of shepherd this new era of free markets and free expression that Jeff wanted to kind of ensure that the paper paper's opinion section focus on. And he's out after basically just a little bit over a year, which is a little bit strange. And I'm sure we're going to get into some of the speculation as to why. But it definitely is a sign that not all of the turmoil or tumult that we've seen at the Post over the last few years is quite over yet.
- [01:46]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is the guy essentially who was supposed to lead the conservative the free markets turn for the Washington Post Ed Board. As you said, this was kind of like part of the drama that started shortly before the 2024 election when the Post pulled its Kamala Harris endorsement at Jeff Bezos's request.
- [02:06]
C
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- [03:44]
A
was all this turmoil and the opinion side and then ultimately Adam o' Neil was kind of brought in as the guy who was going to like be the new face, the new right wing, conservative, libertarian, whatever face of the ed board. A lot of people quit, a lot of people were fired. And so as you said, I mean we're, we don't know exactly what happened here, but I think maybe there can be some speculation, some theories. And what are you hearing?
- [04:08]
B
Yeah, I mean I've been talking to people all day kind of trying to take the temperature. I mean to your point that you said before, there has been, there have been a lot of departures. Actually just going through my phone and looking at, you know, the number of. I feel I have dozens of Washington Post contacts and even just looking through them, I'm like, oh my God. So many of these people are, are gone and have left for other places, you know, because of a lot of these, this kind of internal friction and str. Look, Adam hasn't talked to anybody yet, including the Post. He did not return his own papers request for comment, which I think is notable and also kind of gets at. I think one of the things that I've been hearing repeatedly over the course of the day, which is Just that I think that he wasn't a particularly well liked figure within the newsroom, within the paper. And I think on the newsroom side, you know, there is a little bit of. I think. I think people are a bit more satisfied, you know, with the idea that it might go in a different direction. I think a lot of people in the newsroom have been really frustrated by some of the stuff that's been happening on the opinion side over the last year, because I think, frankly, there are a lot of really talented, skilled journalists who break a lot of stories that people want to read. And what many Washington Post readers and subscribers have not been pleased with the new direction of the editorial board. So I think that there's a lot of. I think that there are a few people who may be very pleased by a decision for Adam to leave on the news side. And I think apparently from talking to people, morale on the opinion side hasn't been much better either. There have been a few people who I talked to who said that the paper hasn't been particularly pleased by some of the metrics. Though Adam, in his note to other staffers today, was quick to point out some of the places where traffic has improved. From what I hear, people weren't the biggest fans of Adam, you know, as a person in the newsroom. And not everybody was pleased as well with the performance of some of the things that he's. That he's tried to push while in charge of the opinion section, including some of its podcasts and videos.
- [06:20]
A
Oh, my God. Stuff I love to talk about whenever I'm feeling down, I like to go check the podcast numbers. Let's dive into that, but briefly, just so this is Adam O'. Neill. This guy was in his 30s. He was kind of a weird choice for this previously. Ed board chairs were like people like Fred Hyatt who were seen as know, love him or hate him. These were people who were like very significant journalists in Washington, really prominent figures. Then you bring in this guy who had been at the Dispatch, which is obviously conservative site, a. A guy who had sort of, according to his reporting from Oliver Darcy, a mixed management record, shall we say, not very popular when he was there. And then he was like in. In his 30s, kind of this, this guy who was. It was usually not sort of. He had big shoes to fill essentially. And boy, did he not fill them. And then curiously, they began. Let's play that video. The clip we have from intro video put out about a year ago.
- [07:10]
D
You don't want to take life advice from me, but I'd love, along with my colleagues, to be your guide through the news to better understand what's happening around the world and in this country. Now, if you're not sick of me already, I'll have more for you soon. For now, all I can say is that I'm excited to get started and you'll be hearing a lot more in the coming weeks and months. I can't wait.
- [07:32]
A
Well, we won't be hearing much more from him these days.
- [07:37]
B
I think it's weird. It's strange though, don't you think Will to when you're introducing yourself to tell the audience, you know, if you aren't sick of me already, you know, in media you're supposed to, people are supposed to want to consume your content. They're not supposed to, you're not supposed to assume that they're sick of you already.
- [07:51]
A
Yes, that was about after 45 previous seconds of video. So it's not as though this was like a sprawling video. It was a, a strange thing and it started things off weird. I think part of the decision they, you know, previous Edward people, David Shipley, Fred Hyatt were not like really front facing. They were not the. There was not a huge media empire built around them. In the case of Adam o', Neill, on the other hand, the Post put a lot into this guy being a forward video personality and a lot of that culminated in, in the Make It Make Sense podcast. Now you might be confused because Make It Make Sense is also the name of a far more popular gossip podcast. It's not that one. It's not that one because even when I try to look it up. So this is. So tell me about Make It Make Sense and then may play some favorite clips.
- [08:39]
B
So I didn't realize that there was another pod more popular podcast that had that same, had the same title. Unfortunately I was only familiar with the, with the Washington Post pods. I think, look, there are. The Washington Post over the course of the last year has been really trying to on the opinion side, build this video podcasting arm because they like many other people have seen a tremendous drop off in traffic overall relative to the heights of the kind of Facebook traffic era. So they've been leading into podcast and video interviews, particularly actually on the opinion side. I really feel like this is a push that's been, that's been happening mainly on opinion, not actually on the news side. And if you look at the view counts on a lot of these videos that are on YouTube and other places. Despite the fact that the Washington Post has a tremendous audience on YouTube. These videos are not putting up large numbers. And when they do seem to kind of catch fire, it's because people are really angry about some of the content. You know, one of the videos, videos that, that was published somewhat recently was a, a piece about Wamada, which I think a lot of people were, were really quite upset about. And you know, there have been a lot of these short form videos that the Post has leaned into that have really seemed to either upset the audience when they have reached them. In a lot of cases they have not reached them though.
- [10:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, this is a podcast and, and you, there are some other video offerings, as you said, and we'll get into some of those. But, but the, in the case of Make It Make Sense, they did a huge overhaul. They built a studio. The reporting was that the video equipment alone cost $80,000. Okay. Now I don't think Make It make sense ever got 80,000 listeners total. I mean, this is a show that would struggle to crack 1,000 views per video. There are kids, I was thinking about this. There are kids this week who will start their own YouTube channel to talk about like Fortnite Skins and they will have more views on one video. Not the Washington Post. So I mean, let's play some fades. As you said, there were a lot, even just this, there was this one about like, why aren't DC Liberals giving their kids weird enough names? Let's run that back.
- [10:48]
B
Oh my God.
- [10:49]
A
Upper middle class professionals often talk a big game about openness, inclusion and social experimentation. But despite their professed openness, they know safe names tend to confer benefits in the real world. So yeah, he's like, why are kids being named Noah and not like, you know, some bizarre names? I mean, it's very, it's a lot of these like, weird kind of like Manhattan Institute, Wall Street Journal Ed Board guys he brought in.
- [11:14]
B
One of the things that I think has really hasn't worked about the podcast and you actually literally do see it sometimes the way even just the ways that people are dressed are like they're kind of going into the office, which I think in, if you look at the top podcast charts and the shows that hit on YouTube, they're, they are not usually personalities with wearing full suit and tie and, you know, their hair combed neat like they're going to like a job interview at a bank. The vibe of a lot of these videos is, is really strange. And I think it gets at the fact that like a lot of the personalities who they've kind of hired and tried to bring in are not necessarily people who are video. Video first, let's. Let's say and don't necessarily have those skills or have the built in audiences on already on short form video or in podcasting. I think that this has been a real struggle for the Post and I think they basically have been trying to kind of replicate some of the success that the Free Press has had in its short form video offerings. But I think actually to give Barry some credit, they hired a lot of younger people who essentially knew how to make short form videos that could do kind of outragey, kind of takes on the right or at least, you know, punching the kind of woke left. And I think the Washington Post has tried to do that to a lot less success.
- [12:43]
A
Yeah, you know, I felt bad for some of these people. Not that, not this name guy because he's already kind of like this right wing pundit in his own right. But like some of these kids, they were meant to be writing white papers about like taking away affordable housing or whatever. They were not meant to be like thrown in front of the public to be like, look at my, look at my idiotic take. Here's my face attached to it. Let's just run that beautiful footage of James Homan now to set this up for folks. It was like, like Belgium or something or the Netherlands had a. They were going to ban advertising of meats in ads. And so James Homan goes down to Mickey D's and gets himself a burger. Now, as you watch this, is this content I like? Is this content that's going to save the Washington Post? Let's play it. Shaming people for wanting to enjoy a hamburger that's smug and elitist. Make it make sense. Indeed. Now, you know, get it back to the, the, the editorial asp. I mean, this is also like under Adam o', Neill, they had these certain kind of like pet issues, like they hated Zo Ron and they were going to get Zoran Mondami and all. It was like, you know, it's a little weird, the Washington Post, you know, you're trying to start this feud with the New York mayor. You know, what did you think of the editorial direction in general?
- [13:55]
B
Yeah, you know, it's been really interesting to see how the Post and under Adam o' Neill has tried to reshape its opinion, given some of the parameters that were set forward by Jeff Bezos last year. Basically when David Shipley left and Bezos announced that there was going to be this new direction for the Post's opinion section, they said that they were going to focus on two things. They were going to essentially narrow the focus of the Washington Post editorial board or editorial page opinion section to focus on free markets and free expression. That was already pretty vague. I remember talking to people there at the time asking, you know, basically what that meant, what was going to fall under those buckets. Because it could be pretty broad and you could have made an argument that plenty of the, plenty of the op eds and things that they were putting out previously were fit that bill essentially or could be described as supporting free expression or, or free markets. So but, but I think the, the idea was they wanted to kind of narrow the scope and that was kind of, some of, some of what was being said to me. You know, as a media reporter at the time. Obviously that has really not been what's happened. The changes that were made that I think Shipley kind of picked up on were, were, were more ob. Ideological and somewhat partisan. Essentially what's happened is that the opinion section has moved really notably to the right on, on a lot of different issues. I mean, obviously we've seen them here. The strange thing to me I guess is how much I assumed that what they wanted to do was to make a version of, you know, like an economist opinion, you know, kind of opinionated piece that was going to talk about, you know, the benefits of essentially like, you know, low corporate tax and supporting business and supporting investment in businesses and having kind of government get out of the way. Kind of a traditional right leaning opinion page. And that's really not been what's happened. As you can see from the videos. A lot of it is kind of the same anti woke, you know, punditry I guess that you would find on places like Fox or on the Free Press or I guess on, you know, to a certain degree now on, on CBS on occasion. And that's. That has surprised. One other kind of piece that's worth noting here is that there's plenty of content that has fallen well outside of it of that. And the most notable columnist at the Washington Post right now is Mark Thiessen, who is a longtime right wing former Bush administration figure who's worked for, who's been with the Post for almost two decades now. He's been writing for the Post for almost two decades as a columnist, but he doesn't focus on free expression or free markets at all. He, his main pursuit over the last year or so has been the defense of Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda and advocating on behalf of military action in the Middle East. When I found to be somewhat remarkable and I thought has really fallen outside of the parameters set forward by Bezos himself.
- [17:07]
A
So Max, you know, just to wrap up here, our colleague JVL here had a theory which is not that, you know, on one hand you might look at this as sort of like, you know, ding dong, the witch is dead. You know, the guy who got rid of all these writers and had this conservative turn that he led this. Maybe this. Does this represent a re. Maybe is the Post going to become more, you know, kind of a traditional liberal center paper? JBL's theory, on the other hand, is that, you know, this is the guy who got his hands dirty that everyone hated whatever kind of an oath, you know, sort of failed to execute. A lot of this stuff, he's out. They're still going to, they're going to bring in another center right guy who, who can maybe execute this a little bit better and doesn't have kind of the stink of the, the big turn on him. And so essential. The political direction here is not going to change even if, even if Adam o' Neill's out.
- [17:54]
B
Yeah, I think JBL is spot on. It's. I don't see, I don't see why they would want to change. They would, they would want to change direction. You know, having basically just done that. Bezos, politics haven't changed at all. And I haven't heard anything from talking to people all day that would suggest that this had anything to do with any sort of unhappiness about the editorial, quote, what's, what's actually in the, the editorials, the pieces, the podcasts. I think it had much more to. With performance and personality than, than with, than with ideology. So anybody who is, you know, celebrating because they think that this means that the Post is going to move back towards the left and you know, have Jennifer Rubin and you know, back and you know, your colleague Catherine, you know, be. And to be putting forward, you know, these kind of anti Trump op EDS and stuff like that. Again, I, I don't. I think they should probably not get their hopes up.
- [18:48]
A
All right, you heard it here, folks. It's probably only going to get worse. Well, Max, that's Max Tanny. Thank you for joining us. You can find Max at Maxwell T A N I Maxwell Tani on Twitter. He's again at Semaphore. He's got the, the Sunday Night newsletter and he's got the Mixed Signals podcast. Look folks, sometimes we just gotta drive into the media drama, you know, and if you like what you saw here, hit the subscribe button. Again, this is the Bulwark. Thank you so much for joining us.