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The Assassination of The Washington Post by the Coward Jeff Bezos

The Assassination of The Washington Post by the Coward Jeff Bezos

New crotch-related ski jumping scandal dropped.

Rusty Foster
February 10, 2026

It turns out “Democracy Dies in Darkness” wasn’t a warning so much as a mission statement. Last week Jeff Bezos fired thirty percent of the all employees at The Washington Post including 300 of the 800 newsroom staff, such as Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson, fired while reporting from a warzone in Kyiv. The newspaper no longer has a Sports section, which is bad according to Sally Jenkins who has already moved on to The Atlantic, or a Books section, which is bad according to Becca Rothfeld who has already moved on to The New Yorker.

“Two paths” meme, where a road forks toward either a shining sunlit castle labeled “The New Yorker” or a dark and stormy castle labeled “The Atlantic.” The caption says “Which way, former Washington Post writer?”

Rothfeld described the whole point of a newspaper with her characteristic elegance:

The maximalism and somewhat uncompromising presumption of a newspaper, with its warren of sections and columns and byways, is a quiet reproach to its audience’s most parochial instincts. Its mission is not to indulge existing tastes but to challenge them—to create a certain kind of person and, thereby, a certain kind of public.

Can you believe she wasn’t already writing for The New Yorker? This is a world historic fumble by semi-sentient thumb Jeff Bezos.

And when I said Jeff Bezos fired thirty percent of the Post’s staff, of course I meant the paper’s executive editor Matt Murray fired them on a Zoom call without any direct participation by either Bezos or publisher and professional henchman Will Lewis. To be fair, no crimes needed covering up at the moment so Lewis presumably judged that his presence wasn’t required, and he was busy enjoying the NFL red carpet and also quitting The Washington Post. Good luck to him in finding another media company to wreck that Cory “Cory Haik” Corrine didn’t already get to.

But what’s the point for Bezos of ruining an institution of American journalism that he could easily afford to fund in its entirety forever? Is it “disinterest” or abandonment? I think Parker Molloy is right: Bezos is intentionally remaking the Post to serve his interests instead of ours.

In two years, Bezos handpicked a publisher from Murdoch’s empire, pushed out the executive editor, killed an endorsement, wrote a new ideological mandate for the opinion pages, decided the terms under which the opinion editor would be replaced, watched as Lewis killed a dissenting column and let a cartoonist walk, and presided over an opinion section that started publishing editorials serving his financial interests without telling readers about the conflicts. This was the most engaged Bezos has been with the Post since he bought it. He just had no interest in the part that does journalism.

…Bezos tore out the parts of the Post that might cause him problems and kept the parts that serve his interests. The megaphone stays. The newsroom goes.

Ex-Postie Alexandra Petri (who got lost on her way to The New Yorker, but we remain optimistic) had some belated advice to Bezos about what he could do with $250 million in 2013.

A yacht will never turn a profit, and it would be confusing to expect it to. But you know that your net worth is such that if the yacht never supports itself, you will still be proud to call yourself the yacht’s owner and will not suddenly say, “Well, perhaps if we just pivoted part of the yacht sharply to the right and knocked dozens of people off, the yacht would suddenly become self-sustaining.”

And among the blizzard of Takes,¹ Delia provided some actual service with a list of open journalism jobs.

abadidea posted “This textbox is a message and part of a system of messages. Java is installed on over three billion devices. Java is found everywhere, even in your car. We thought we were a powerful culture.”

How It Started / How It’s Going: Crown of Empress Eugénie edition.

The same crown, but all mushed down after being dropped on the street during the Louvre heist

Same, tbh.

Today In Sports: New crotch-related ski jumping scandal dropped. (Previously in pelvic ski jumping shenanigans). The Super Bowl™ ads were shitty, but not 404 Media’s ad, broadcast exclusively in the hot Ottumwa, Iowa² local market. “What it was like to be a bush at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance.” “Athletic Greens is ‘clinically backed.’ What does that even mean?” asks Victoria Song. Nothing, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just spinach powder.

Today In Dystopia: Rent a human dot ai. New Lay’s potato chip ad campaign aimed at teaching consumers that potato chips are made from potatoes. Ring doorbell cameras are back to their original project of building an AI powered private surveillance dragnet for police. If you have one of these things please take a hammer to it. Jade Helm is here, and now the right wing loves it. “San Francisco’s billionaire bacchanal a big bust.” Specifically, Aella’s big bust. And hackers stole and wrecked Zombocom. At least the infinite is still possible at html5zombo.com.

Adam Chalmers posted “You're absolutely right – this actually isn't a place of honor. * I thought esteemed deeds were commemorated here, but that was wrong. * The message wasn't about treasure, it was about danger. That's on me. * I won't sugarcoat it – the danger is still present, and now it's in your body.”

The Epstein Files may have turned everyone into conspiracists but Liz Lopatto dug into them and found a big club of powerful men united by their desire to abuse women without suffering any consequences for it, which is exactly what it looks like on the surface. Or as Jude Doyle put it: “You know, you can just say ‘Patriarchy’.”

Is there a gas leak in San Francisco?

Our former regrettable platform Substack is still making money from Nazis, reports Geraldine McKelvie at The Guardian, just like it did in 2023, and 2024, and 2025.

Lorin Hochstein: “Nobody knows how the whole system works.”

Sebastian Stockman on his friend (and everyone else’s) the late Dan McQuade,³ and their shared love of the overblown lede:

We first identified our shared appreciation of the cringeworthy journalistic opener in the conference room at [The Daily Pennsylvanian], where we happened to catch this lead-in to a local news report of some tragedy : “Little [Name Redacted] wanted a pony for his eighth birthday. Instead, he’ll get a funeral for himself and his mother.”

And I don’t know about you but I’m pretty excited for what Alison Willmore called Emerald Fennell’s “smooth-brained Wuthering Heights.”

Cullen posted “i think this image mightve cast America into Hell Dimension” above the infamous Planet Hillary image from the NYT

“Planet Hillary,” if it isn’t already permanently burned into your trauma centers.

Today’s Song: Sleigh Bells, “Crown on the Ground”

Today in Tabs is brought to you by one hour and ten minutes of Mulder and Scully getting into and out of rental cars and the universal human desire to just draw a little horse.

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1 Guilty, guilty guilty, none of us are free of sin.

2 CORRECTION: The ad’s market was originally misstated as Helena, MT, which is where The Verge previously aired their stunt ad. We regret the error.

3 ANOTHER CORRECTION: I originally misspelled Dan McQuade’s name. What a disaster today honestly.

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