Drop My WAPO Subscription?

...not quite yet...let's drop Amazon instead

I got a terse email from the Washington Post just a few hours ago with this message line: The Jennifer Rubin newsletter has ended.

For those not familiar with her work, she was one of those conservative-leaning opinion writers¹ who were repelled by the MAGA turn of the Republican Party under Trump, and changed her tune to instead support democracy and the rule of law. She explained that transformation in this September 2020 opinion piece entitled Why I dropped ‘conservative’ from my Twitter profile. Please click on the link. It’s worth a read, even if it is four years old.

Rubin’s resignation announcement said:

Her erstwhile colleague, Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Anne Telnaes preceded her in leaving the Post when the newspaper chose to withhold the cartoon below.² Anne explains her decision in this piece, Why I'm quitting the Washington Post , again, worth your time to read.

The cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes that the WAPO chose not to run, leading to her resignation. The cartoon shows WAPO owner Jeff Bezos — joined by Facebook & Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, AI CEO Sam Altman, LA Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the Walt Disney Company/ABC News in offering tribute to our once-and-future Felon-President. Apple’s Tim Cook is absent, despite his own personal $1 millipn contribution to Trump’s “Inauguration Committee,” which in reality little more than a slush fund to buy access and influence.

Rubin’s and Telneas’s resignations were just the latest. The WAPO has been bleeding reporters, editorial board members, and subscribers (a reported 250,000 since the killing of the Harris endorsement).

I’ve decided — at least for now — not to join the exodus. Where would we be without the incredible reporting of the WAPO and the New York Times over the last 8 years? The last thing we need to do is bail on the media. I’ve told folks who want to end WAPO subscriptions over Bezos’s cowering to instead drop their Amazon subscriptions. Sure, it makes life a little less convenient. But that is much closer to hitting Bezos where it hurts than dropping “The Post” is. And you know what? It means a little sacrifice.

A pretty little sacrifice compared to what Ukrainians are living through in the fight against authoritarianism. We’re gonna need an aggressive, independent media going forward. Support them until they completely surrender that independence.

Besides that, it strengthens your LOCAL economy. If you want those stores around, you need to support them, not outsource all purchases to Bezos-and-company.

1. Among the publications she wrote for were stalwart conservative-if-not-right wing organs such as Commentary, PJ Media, Human Events, The Weekly Standard, New York Post, New York Daily News, and the National Review.

2. Bezos (WAPO) and Soon-Shiong (LA Times) both blocked editorials backing Kamala Harris; Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the Inaugural slush fund and declared Facebook will no longer fact-check; Disney owns ABC News and recently agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit by Trump by saying it would donate $15 million to a presidential foundation and museum; AI’s Altman also donated $1 million to the slush fund.