politics

WaPo losing workers; Pittsburgh losing an entire NEWSPAPER

As a former newspaper reporter from 1999-2011, I know layoffs happen. I managed to leave on my own terms; however, some friends didn’t, and I watched them clean out their desks and leave the office.

So, when word broke that the Washington Post laid off 300 workers, many of them journalists, I, like many other decent people, felt compassion for them, whoever they are. They have families and bills like the rest of us.

What is a bit overwrought is this notion floating around journalistic circles that reporters should never be victims of the economic laws of reality. The newspaper, like many, bleeds money: $100 million last year alone.

But because WaPo owner Jeff Bezos is a billionaire, he should essentially keep subsidizing the newspaper because reporters are precious to democracy, or something.

“If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will,” the Washington Post Guild, a union that represents Post employees, said on X.

I didn’t hear these same journalists lamenting Amazon (owned by Bezos) laying off 16,000 people last month. Bezos is a multi-billionaire and could probably subsidize the salaries and benefits for the 16,000 unfortunate folks. Did the Post run an editorial demanding that?

Also, did you know that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is closing entirely in a few months? I didn’t until I heard someone on television say it in passing. I’m sure whoever owns the PPG is a millionaire. Maybe he/she should’ve just sucked up the losses and kept throwing money into a losing venture.

But that’s not realistic. Newspapers aren’t the US Post Office, which loses millions of dollars a year, into the billions, and is subsidized by the government. If the government had to operate by reality’s rules and not get to print money, the USPS would’ve been nixed long ago.

So, what makes newspapers so special? Public polling routinely shows that our trust in the media is at record lows. Trust me, 99.9% of the country will quickly recover from the WaPo no longer having a sports section. And unlike the PPG, the WaPo will continue to exist, at least for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, the paper will figure out how to turn a profit; otherwise, the future’s looking pretty bleak.

Whaddya mean the Oscars snubbed Animal Farm?

Full disclosure: Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is one of my favorite books. For all the fretting about banned books in America (which is bullshit because anyone claiming such-and-such book is banned can easily purchase it on Amazon), you could literally be jailed or worse if someone catches you reading this book in North Korea. The Stalinist hellhole banned it because (suprise) the Dear Leader disliked its warning about communism.

The book chronicles a barnyard animal revolution to seize control of a farm where everyone can live in a utopia. Then Napolean the pig takes over and the farm devolves into modern-day Pyongyang. If that doesn’t scream animated children’s movie, nothing does.

Enter Andy Serkis of Lord of the Rings fame to direct a “reimagined” computer-animated version of Orwell’s cautionary tale. Whenever you see “reimagined” slapped on a famous story, run. And that applies to this flick, which, surprisingly didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best animated film. I thought it was a shoe-in because Serkis stripped communism from Animal Farm as an evil ideology and replaced it with capitalism (insert foreboding music here).

Not only did this completely neuter the entire point behind Animal Farm, it allowed Hollywood press people to write insufferable nonsense like “(Napoleon’s) desperation to belong among ruthless human billionaires and their cyberpunk-esque vehicles strikes close to home in 2025.” Good lord.

Stripping Stalinism as the corrupting force from Animal Farm is like reimagining The Silence of the Lambs with a vegan Hannibal Lecter. I’ve not seen Serkis’s idiotic take on Orwell’s classic, nor will I. The film had a limited screening in 2025 and will receive a wider release this year. If the reviews I could find are any indication, it’ll be out of the theaters faster than you can say “four legs good, two legs bad.”

Here’s a line from the Variety review: “… but the message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what Animal Farm needs to appeal to a modern audience. Fart jokes.