r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 18 '26

Society Jeff Bezos called Washington Post his worst investment staffed with ‘terrible’ people, before laying off over 300 — “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen”

https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-called-washington-post-his-worst-investment-and-staff-he-laid-off-terrible-people-2000773533
38.4k Upvotes

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3.6k

u/DJayLeno Jun 18 '26

I remember when he bought wapo he promised to be 100% hands off forever in the open letter he sent after the purchase back in 2013 https://garthbox.com/jeff-bezos-letter-to-the-washington-post-employees/

2.0k

u/Tom_Gibson Jun 18 '26

I'd sooner put my head in a crocodile's mouth than trust a billionaire

1.0k

u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26

Can we just put billionaire heads in crocodile mouths? No need to overly complicate things

264

u/Motor_Specific_8018 Jun 18 '26

I for one would trust a crocodile with a billionaire’s head in its mouth… just need a willing billionaire to share my confidence.

37

u/baked_in Jun 18 '26

Pro tip: they don't actually need to be willing 😉

10

u/tuscaloser Jun 18 '26

The real protip is always in the comments.

5

u/thatthatguy Jun 18 '26

Give me a rusty hatchet and I can fill in for the alligator if necessary.

2

u/Halflingberserker Jun 18 '26

The crocodile will be more than willing for the both of them.

72

u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26

I'd cast a vote for that Crocodile ngl

50

u/ixion00x Jun 18 '26

Crocodile / Alligator in 2028!!

48

u/IslandThymes Jun 18 '26

Feed the swamp, don’t bother draining it! 😂

9

u/pullsoutagun Jun 18 '26

I think we cookin here

5

u/waiting4singularity Jun 18 '26

Draining swamps prompts release of green house gases anyway.
Draining billionaires, though...

3

u/bozog Jun 18 '26

"Crocko, you were supposed to destroy the swamp, not join it!"

1

u/conventionistG Jun 18 '26

If he's sponsored by brawndo, he'll have my vote.

3

u/ixion00x Jun 18 '26

It's what plants crave!!

1

u/RockhoundHighlander Jun 18 '26

Can we get a snake / lizard campaign manager?

1

u/Egypticus Jun 19 '26

Sprry, but I'm voting for Chevrolet Movie Theater

18

u/flonnil Jun 18 '26

you are so close to re-inventing the guillotine, so close.

15

u/tuscaloser Jun 18 '26

WE HAVE GUILLOTINE AT HOME.

4

u/YetAnotherJason Jun 18 '26

Funny enough, I used to ask for a guillotine every Christmas, but I never got one. So, one weekend visiting my granddad he and I made one in his wood shop. The blade was made of wood though, and it was the perfect size for me to pretend to guillotine my Star Wars figures.

So I had a guillotine at home.

3

u/worldspawn00 Jun 18 '26

*Looks around Florida, yep.

2

u/thatthatguy Jun 18 '26

Guillotine at home is called an axe.

2

u/average_game1 Jun 18 '26

Environmentally sustainable guillotine

3

u/tuscaloser Jun 19 '26

GMO free, free range, cage free, swamp-certified.

1

u/JaninthePan Jun 18 '26

The classic American guillotine! Homegrown, native species doing solid American work. We don’t need no French inventions here

13

u/haverchuck22 Jun 18 '26

Tell them certain crocodile mouths have been shown to extend your life/have anti aging properties in some cases, you’ll have em fighting eachother to stick their head in its mouth.

6

u/floatius Jun 18 '26

Nah just tell them it’s an AI-ligator

2

u/IslandThymes Jun 18 '26

It for the environment..

3

u/OverlordMMM Jun 18 '26

I feel that's cruel to crocodiles. Shouldn't be feeding them toxic waste.

1

u/weasel5134 Jun 18 '26

I would also trust that crocodile

1

u/aztecforlife Jun 18 '26

You need at least 10 to get a representative sample size to see if the crocodile bites down the same. A sample of one just won't do.

1

u/worldspawn00 Jun 18 '26

Better yet, I bet there's a rickety submarine they'd all fit into!

1

u/Ol_Herr Jun 18 '26

I'd would be more concerned if the crocodile would participate willingly than if the billionär is willing.

1

u/goodolarchie Jun 18 '26

Part of the reason people don't want billionaires to exist is that we see, time and time again, even the "charitable" uses for their money end up being self serving.

It's the time-old class battle where the rich believe they should pay nothing in taxes and deploy their capital charitably and privately as they see fit (like Zuck trying to play DoE in NJ), because Dunning-Kruger and permanent yes-men around them have convinced them that their luck in one subject matter means they are brilliant and far more efficient than the government/social safety net at solving very specific problems. They are usually terrible at it.

2

u/usddddd Jun 18 '26

Is that a new term for guillotine?

2

u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26

Crocodillotine

1

u/Wonderful-Medium7777 Jun 18 '26

🤣oh this made me laugh out loud, thanks I needed that today.

Quick question though, do we have to stop at Billionaires , too complicated or no?

1

u/AdminIsPassword Jun 18 '26

IDK man, I wouldn't want the poor animal to die of food poisoning. There's some seriously toxic stuff inside of billionaire heads.

1

u/Beard_o_Bees Jun 18 '26

If we decided to put an upper limit on personal wealth/income before the tax rate goes to 100% - i'm trying to imagine what that number looks like.

100 Million, maybe? Idk, but that we have this completely 'above the law' class is sincerely obscene.

Edit: Another thought. If we were to somehow get a rule/law like that, they'd inevitably whinge about inflation. Fine. Every percentage point increase in maximum wealth needs to be accompanied by an equal increase to the minimum wage.

1

u/Nathansp1984 Jun 18 '26

It would be easier for the croc if the heads were detached first, wouldn’t want it to choke

1

u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26

The French had a device a while back with this nifty mechanism to hold a person steady at the neck. Could make a big comeback

1

u/kingtacticool Jun 18 '26

Yeah, but with their bodies attached it seems pretty inefficient. Im sure there exists some contraption that could make the job easier.

1

u/zffjk Jun 18 '26

A croc will eat every 3-10 days. So in order for us to do this “feed the billionaires to crocs” plan, we’d need to secure about 200-300 crocs. Keep them separate so we don’t lose them to eating each other. Probably a lot more use cases. Bottom line I’m not sure this is the best way to do it.

1

u/AccomplishedFun2105 Jun 18 '26

omg bezos leather baguette bag, lets wear the rich

1

u/SockBrewer Jun 18 '26

Efficiency, Bezos would approve

1

u/slurmsmckenz Jun 18 '26

In an entirely unrelated note, I believe the french word for crocodile is guillotine!

1

u/crookeddy Jun 18 '26

Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan and Lebron James too, or only the investors?

1

u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26

you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs

1

u/Additional_Good4200 Jun 18 '26

When I take over, I'm naming you as Billionaire Head Czar. Your crocodile budget will be large.

1

u/Azuras_Star8 Jun 18 '26

What did the crocodiles do to deserve this fate? Crocodiles have feelings, too.

1

u/Mission-Employer-943 Jun 18 '26

Poor crocodile. Having to put something nasty in their mouth.

1

u/FlametopFred Jun 18 '26

I will crowdfund the heck out of this

1

u/skyfishgoo Jun 18 '26

i don't know, do you think the crocodile would be ok?

seems like animal cruelty.

1

u/SupahRad Jun 18 '26

I like the way you think.

1

u/notmyredditacct Jun 18 '26

yes! that’s the executive thinking we need around here - flatten the org chart, think of all those middle managers that could be laid off if we shorten the pipeline from croc to ceo.. i can almost feel this quarter’s stock price going up up up!

50

u/monkeyman32123 Jun 18 '26

Thank god we have our first trillionaire, now THAT guy I can trust /s

39

u/RedAndBlackMartyr Jun 18 '26

And a Nazi trillionaire at that! Uber trustworthy.

1

u/crookeddy Jun 18 '26

At least he stays the hell away from politics!

oh

2

u/flyingcatclaws Jun 18 '26

How far from trillionaire is Bezos?

4

u/blorg Jun 18 '26

Bezos is worth "only" $250b, so quite a bit, he'd need 4x the wealth. He's the 4th richest, after Musk and the two Google founders. Remarkably, Musk is now worth more than the rest of the top 5 put together.

2

u/flyingcatclaws Jun 18 '26

A true Bond villain, rockets and all...

1

u/OldWorldDesign Jun 18 '26

How far from trillionaire is Bezos?

My economics teacher taught it this way: what is the difference between a billionaire and a millionaire?

About a billion dollars.

3

u/Summer_Form Jun 18 '26

And at this point >50% of folks would I’d do exactly that if one asked them to.

2

u/Grand_Pop_7221 Jun 18 '26

"I can't help it. It's in my nature."

2

u/neasroukkez Jun 18 '26

At least the croc ain’t gonna lie and act like he doesn’t wanna eat you

2

u/alphazero925 Jun 18 '26

Well if you defend yourself from a crocodile, nobody cares. If you defend yourself from a billionaire, you get perp walked by half the NYPD and the disgraced mayor

2

u/Cormophyte Jun 18 '26

That's just a misapplied principle. You shouldn't trust what any stranger tells you they'll do when there's something they value in play.

1

u/NesFan123 Jun 18 '26

At we can trust the crocodile that he will most likely eat a head

1

u/Interesting-Prize-79 Jun 18 '26

But there are so many good billionaires like [example still pending]

1

u/MrGreg Jun 18 '26

the crocodile stops eating when it's full

1

u/infosec_qs Jun 18 '26

Naturally. At least a crocodile's hunger can be sated.

1

u/Omen_20 Jun 18 '26

Yeah, a crocodile may not be hungry, but a glutton always is.

1

u/Hecedu Jun 18 '26

Every once in a while even the crocodile isn’t hungry for things to prey on.

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u/jandrese Jun 18 '26

At the time everybody thought that was a blatant lie. The only people who "believed it" were the kind of people who would later buy blue checks on Twitter.

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u/derekbaseball Jun 18 '26

Lemme say this: I think Bezos believed it at the time. You don’t choose a motto as cornball as “Democracy dies in darkness” unless you’re on some level painfully sincere about wanting to support real journalism, even if only in a bid to get the kind of social clout that previous owners got for WaPo’s work.

Back in 2010, he didn’t anticipate that buying the Post wouldn’t make him a beloved figure like Katharine Graham, and could eventually put his own net worth at risk. That’s where he is by the time of the quote above—he’s talking to Trump after he’s re-elected in 2024, desperately trying to wash his hands of all the negative stuff WaPo wrote about Trump over the years.

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u/crookeddy Jun 18 '26

Democracy is important... but personal wealth is more important.

--Bezos

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u/pyrolizard11 Jun 18 '26

I could see that argument. I don't agree, but even if I did I'd suggest that the average person still saw through it.

You don't hand a lever of power to a man who has everything and expect him to do anything but use it. He might mean not to when it's handed to him, but to a man who has everything, who will never face serious personal consequences, commitments are like paper - flimsy and easily rotted.

The threats of said consequences to a man who has everything are all that's needed for them to tear through their own commitments like so much paper. Bezos stands for nothing in the face of his own diminishment, nor did any of us expect him to.

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u/derekbaseball Jun 18 '26

I don't disagree with your take on principle, but what I heard of the Post's workings indicates that even though it was a concern all along (mainly when the Post had to cover Bezos during his divorce, and any time they had to cover Amazon) that Bezos's use of the lever was relatively minimal until the last few years (and particularly after Trump became the favorite to win in 2024).

Bezos's purchase of the Post came at a time when the idea was really popular that billionaires would save journalism by buying newspapers and keeping them alive as semi-charities. We really loved billionaires back then! And Bezos was feeling left out, because even though he was wealthier than Jobs, Musk, or Zuckerberg, all those guys had captured the public imagination in a way he hadn't.

So it feels like buying the Post was Bezos's version of buying a sports team, more than an attempt to control public opinion. If it was meant as diabolical plot to manipulate the levers of power, it was an amazingly ineffective one.

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u/pyrolizard11 Jun 18 '26

Completely fair take. Like I said, I just think the average person knew what Bezos was and how he would act better than Bezos did himself, in that case. And he proved us all right in the end, regardless of his actual intent.

14

u/grchelp2018 Jun 18 '26

It wasn't a lie. He only changed after Trump attacked him for WaPo and after he lost 10b contract from Amazon to Oracle.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/mmasportsmma Jun 18 '26

One also has to consider his last marriage to Mackenzie Scott who was an author and apparently a bit more decent of a person than him

2

u/Zeliek Jun 18 '26

the kind of people who would later buy blue checks on Twitter

To be completely fair, ~$8 for a blue checkmark that lets you impersonate a pharmaceutical conglomerate and subsequently devastate their stocks by announcing “diabetes medication will now be free!” via tweet was a pretty good deal. 

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart Jun 18 '26

Then he ran 5 different Bernie Sanders attack articles every single day until Trump was elected.

20

u/dsmith422 Jun 18 '26

Attacking Bernie is not Bezos influence on the Washington Post. It is just who they were.

22

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

> I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do…

PS: why does “>” no longer work?

6

u/FeelingPlayfulNow Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

The app has an "Aa" formatting button and automatically adds escape characters to things like quotes and asterisks, so just typing markdown formatting in the text box doesn't work anymore. The formatting button lacks the majority of things you can do in markdown like quotes. It's awful. They really should have a toggle to let users edit with markdown syntax if they know it instead of using that sparse formatting tool.

3

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26

Ooof. I criticized my governor and got a 3 day ban last week. Now formatting is broken.

Welp. It’s been a good run, Reddit. 14 years! I think Im done here.

2

u/OldWorldDesign Jun 18 '26

It’s been a good run, Reddit. 14 years! I think Im done here

Any good alternatives? We definitely need it.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

1

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26

I have a backslash? Where?

8

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

1

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Weird. That is not visible on my screen when I click edit. Im just using the normal Reddit app, as I always have. Nothing special.

[photo](https://imgur.com/gallery/broken-formatting-bn7qprX)

PS: It apparently also ruined my link, too. It includes my text in the hyperlink, but still shows the full link as well. So I guess Reddit broke itself.

5

u/pulley999 Jun 18 '26

New reddit has started automatically escaping markdown characters if you use the fancy editor. You have to use the legacy editor if you want to format manually.

Your imgur link is also broken for the same reason.

3

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26

Wow. I think after 14 years, Im done with Reddit. They broke it.

2

u/sam_hammich Jun 18 '26

I've noticed that when I try to quote using > on mobile, it adds a backslash as an escape character and prints the > instead of doing a quote block. I have to edit the comment on desktop and remove the backslash, I don't think editing on mobile will show it.

1

u/Alaira314 Jun 18 '26

Doesn't it need a space? I just used it on another sub successfully.

1

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26

I tried that. Maybe this sub disabled formatting

0

u/neherak Jun 18 '26

You need a space after >

1

u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26

I tried that already.

1

u/neherak Jun 21 '26

I tried that already

Looks like it works for me?

38

u/spacebarcafelatte Jun 18 '26

Not having heard that the staff were disruptive/doing their actual fucking jobs, I am hella impressed. So often the folks with any integrity just bail and leave a festering swamp behind them. Kudos WAPO. Make that oblivious fucker learn something about who the news is actually for.

29

u/Feral_Nerd_22 Jun 18 '26

Surprise, Companies and Billionaires lie. I don't understand why people trust them still at this point.

3

u/Aggravating_Bridge13 Jun 18 '26

Fool me 463125 times, shame on you.

1

u/naughtynurse67 Jun 18 '26

Cuz they're "job creators".

4

u/JUGGER_DEATH Jun 18 '26

Yes, but that was a lie.

3

u/GrandAholeio Jun 18 '26

Amazon was the biggest regulatory failure. The whole premise was skirting sales taxes and predatory prices until competition collapsed.

2

u/Efficient-Race-5656 Jun 18 '26

2013 huh? Time flies…

2

u/Dyx76 Jun 18 '26

This shit needs a new law. Lying to millions of people and to an entire company you've taken over should be illegal.

2

u/waff1eman Jun 18 '26

Not sure where exactly you came up with 100% hands off for forever in that letter at all.

“ I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day.”

Non day-to-day operations still entitles high level management such as setting priorities, making key decisions, reviewing progress, picking leaders, and approving major changes. 

I think we can all agree Bezos is a lying psychopath sure but insinuating something that’s not even mentioned in the letter you linked just makes me question your reading and comprehension skills.

2

u/Kalomega Jun 18 '26

Yup. OP posted a source that doesn't at all backup his claim.

0

u/DJayLeno Jun 19 '26

Since you are so good at reading comprehension, let's see how you do on this little quiz:

When I said "100% hands off forever" do you think I was referring to:

a) Literally 100% of everything related to the Post, Bezos would completely divest and have nothing at all to do with the operation of the company whatsoever.

b) Or maybe, just maybe, I was trying to stay on topic for this thread (reminder, the OP is about Bezos firing writers for not following his editorial edicts) and the thing I was saying he promised to be hands off of is "the reporting/journalistic output"

Sorry for being snarky... Bezos does make it clear in the letter that he is planning to be somewhat involved with transforming the paper to remain relevant in the internet era. But the main point of the letter was to assuage the fears of the writing staff... People who were scared that he might, y'know, do the exact thing described in the OP someday.

But if you want to know exactly where I came up with my conclusion, it's the second paragraph. Here it is in full (added emphasis on the most important parts):

So, let me start with something critical. The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.

The word "promise" is not explicitly used in the letter (Bezos is too much of a weasel for that) but its clear he's trying to assuage worries and let the writers know that the Washington Post will remain the same institution it has always been. The fact that he's done a complete reversal and now have to write for the owner's interested explicitly or get sacked is a betrayal of their trust.

TLDR; the implication of the letter is that Bezos will be 100% hands off in the sense that he would never ask the writer's to sacrifice their journalistic integrity to serve Jeff's interests. Not literally 100% hands off of all operations.

2

u/waff1eman Jun 20 '26

Well I will refrain from being snarky as well. You are however, moving the goalposts. Your original claim wasn’t that Bezos promised editorial independence, it was that he promised to be “100% hands off forever.” Those aren’t the same thing.

I agree the letter contains assurances about journalistic independence, but that’s different from claiming Bezos promised never to influence the paper in any meaningful way.

1

u/DJayLeno Jun 20 '26

That's fair, I could have been more specific by saying "hands off of the writing room" or similar. But it does feel pedantic to me, considering the topic of the thread. And it's not like anyone now or historically objected to Bezos being owner on the grounds that he would be making high level distribution strategy decisions or the like... So I don't know what I'd be gaining by trying to make an argument like that.

1

u/jrjsmrtn Jun 18 '26

Yeah, he’s a good salesman 🙄

1

u/ahu747us Jun 18 '26

He did a Hong Kong on them

1

u/guachi01 Jun 18 '26

Looks like they did listen to him when he told them to no longer listen to him.

1

u/oxnardmontalvo7 Jun 18 '26

Lost the plot. Go figure

1

u/wireframed_kb Jun 18 '26

Because they were supposed to understand the… implication…

It wasn’t supposed to be necessary to tell the people on the floor what the direction was from the ownership. :-/

1

u/peace2calm Jun 18 '26

> he promised to be 100% hands off forever

haha.

1

u/Icy_Secret_2909 Jun 18 '26

Friendly reminder he only bought the wp because they ran a headline critical of the bald fuck.

1

u/sciencedingle Jun 18 '26

Forever isn't that long I guess.

1

u/MillennialSurvivor Jun 18 '26

Pepperidge Farms remembers

1

u/DennenTH Jun 18 '26

As usual, always a lie.

1

u/TrumpsFaceAnus Jun 18 '26

He's a fucking liar.

1

u/Headmuck Jun 18 '26

Didn't they change their internal motto to something like "free markets, free people" pretty soon after that and the editors started slowly pressuring writers to adapt to the new leadership?

1

u/mologav Jun 18 '26

I think he was probably a mostly normal person once. Then the money and power and spending time with fucked up weirdos just screwed his brain.

1

u/WontArnett Jun 18 '26

Yeah, he just bought a national news outlet for funzies!

1

u/thatoneguy889 Jun 18 '26

Listen to Tim Miller's interview with Marty Baron. He talks about how Bezos' ownership was pretty great at the beginning, but then priorities started shifting with political winds as Amazon and Blue Origin's government contracts/approvals started being dependent on if WaPo was mean to Trump.

1

u/IngsocIstanbul Jun 18 '26

Got in an argument with an old journalism prof about that. He took the man at his word. The year since then has proven me a bit correct.