We subscribed to The Washington Post growing up. I remember discovering that there were columnists who appeared in metro, style, and sports, some of them twice a week. Determining their rhythms. Learning which movie critic aligned with my tastes. When I got old enough to plan my weekend around the going out guide. Their incredibly knowledgeable books section that covered stuff that wasn't just literary or a bestseller.
I had a friend working at the Post when it got bought by a billionaire. She was laid off a few years later with almost her whole team. As they slowly shrank the metro section down, as their popular sports columnists left for the sports channel, and they made minimal efforts to grow their replacements to the same stature.
The Post has slowly changed. And certainly the rise of the internet and the changing ad scape mean all news sites are grappling with change. But to me it seemed the higher ups assumed that having Washington in the name was locality enough. Of course this meant to find out what was actually happening in the city where I lived I had to turn to other news sources, like WTOP, the 51st, Washington City Paper, and City Cast. And so I had less time for the Post because the Post stopped serving what I wanted.
It's hard not to wonder if like Twitter this wasn't an intentional death blow to a thing that had provided clear eyed reporting of many goings on.
Or perhaps, the signs were already there when an award winning journalist saved a key revelation for his book rather than his newspaper column.
I am sorry for all the incredible people who lost their jobs this week.