I rather suspect the latter. That’s how the Internet works, after all. The more clicks you get, the better you are. The New Yorker’s “nothing but class no matter what the cost” approach to journalism only worked because the magazine made money hand over fist. When the money declined, so did the patience. Bezos, I presume, is thinking of how to build an international journalistic platform that will reach the Aspen, Davos, Singapore crowd, and he knows a lot more about that sort of thing than I do. He’ll be patient about bearing the costs of providing quality customer service, but will customers demand those multi-part investigations into human suffering that were universally regarded as Pulitzer bait back in those flush times before the Internet, or is that yesterday’s news?
One thing that will go, I think, is the Post’s remaining links to Sixties-style East Coast liberalism. Bezos’ brand of West Coast cool has no emotional links to the Civil Rights Era. He’s had no personal experience with the Midwest/East Coast Big City Blues—the racial conflicts that came close to splitting most of the nation’s big cities in half. Bezos is used to success, not to frustration, failure, and stalemate. He won’t agonize about alienating DC’s black population because he won’t be aiming at it, and because DC won’t be “his city.” Concern for the “little guy,” regardless of color, which has been the defining characteristic of East Coast liberalism since FDR’s New Deal, is likely to continue to dwindle. Bezos’ idea of “reform” will probably mean “getting a handle on entitlements”—that is to say, cutting them.
Interesting to me but quite possibly not interesting to Bezos is the Post’s take on foreign policy, which to my mind has been essentially a child of Fred Hiatt’s obsession with Israel. Will Bezos be a “realist” (which is the polite term neocons use to mean “Arabist”)? That is, will he take his thinking from the international community, which is unsentimental at best when it comes to Israel, or will he join in the conventional wisdom that rules Capitol Hill and realize that to get along one must go along?
I suspect the latter. Bezos is not the type to pick a fight over content for content’s sake. If Fred Hiatt’s stuff is a drag on the market, he’s gone, but as long as sales are good, Bezos won’t care. Rich guy libertarianism isn’t much like Rand Paul libertarianism. Who needs “rights” when you’ve got money?
