You probably know who is pictured, above. In fact, I wrote about him only yesterday, in my blog posting about billionaires.
Jeff Bezos. That's who is pictured above. I got the picture from a news article in The Guardian that let me know that Bezos is currently "the richest man on the planet." He is not, though - the way The Guardian sees it - the "richest person ever." You can read the article if you are interested in finding out why that's true.
Though I am mentioning Bezos in this blog posting today, the blog posting is not really about Bezos. It's about The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos bought in 2013. On February 4th of this year, a little over a month ago, Bezos cut 300 members of the Washington Post newsroom, in what The Intercept called "a journalistic bloodbath." The Intercept's article was not alone in commenting on Bezos' actions. A column in The New York Times, by Carlos Lozada, was titled this way: "An Elegy For My Washington Post."
If you click the link just provided, you should be able to read the entirety of Lozada's column, which is focused on the "Meyer Principles," named for Eugene Meyer, who purchased The Washington Post in 1933. These principles are formally titled, "Seven Principles For The Conduct of A Newspaper," and are prominently displayed in the new building into which Bezos moved the newspaper after he purchased it.
Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper:
- The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.
- The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.
- As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.
- What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.
- The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.
- In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.
- The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.
- Written by Eugene Meyer, March 5, 1935
The sixth one of these seven principles suggests that the "richest man on the planet" could have followed that sixth principle, and made what for him would have been a minor sacrifice of his material fortune, had Bezos actually believed in that principle (or any of them). He clearly didn't, and doesn't.
An "Elegy" (which is what Lozada calls his column) is a "lament," and is intended to express sorrow, and to mourn for something. Lozada is mourning for the end of The Washington Post as he knew it. Is it time for us to "lament" and "mourn" the loss of our nation? That is not my suggestion. I'm with Joe Hill!
Joe Hill was songwriter, itinerant laborer, and union organizer, Joe Hill became famous around the world after a Utah court convicted him of murder. Even before the international campaign to have his conviction reversed, however, Joe Hill was well known in hobo jungles, on picket lines and at workers' rallies as the author of popular labor songs and as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) agitator. Thanks in large part to his songs and to his stirring, well-publicized call to his fellow workers on the eve of his execution—"Don't waste time mourning, organize (emphasis added)!"
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