Newspaper non-recommendations at the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times are part of a trend, but their readers aren’t happy about it

The number of newspapers supporting a candidate for president has declined over the past two decades due to the industry’s financial problems, in part because owners reason that there is no point in alienating some subscribers by taking a strong position on a politically polarizing time.

Yet this past week The Washington Post And Los Angeles Times have angered readers for the exact opposite reason: by choosing not to select a favored candidate.

The fallout from both decisions continued Monday, with Post owner Jeff Bezos taking the unusual step of publicly defending the move in his own newspaper’s columns. Three members of the Post’s editorial staff resigned from their positions and some journalists begged readers not to express their disapproval by canceling subscriptions. Many thousands have already done so.

Bezos, in one note to readers, said it was a principled position to withhold expressions of support. People essentially don’t care and they see it as a sign of bias, he said. His comments came hours after NPR reported that more than 200,000 people had canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post.

If NPR’s report is true, it would be a surprising blow to an outlet that does that lost money and lost staff despite having over 2.5 million subscribers last year. A Post spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Times has admitted to losing thousands of subscribers as a result of its own decision.

Both newspapers reportedly ran editorials in support of Democrat Kamala Harris. Instead, at the urging of Bezos and the Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong, they decided not to approve the proposal. Post publisher Will Lewis called it “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

However, by announcing their decisions within two weeks of Election Day, the newspapers left themselves vulnerable to criticism that their publishers were trying not to anger Republican Donald Trump if voters returned him to power. “It didn’t seem like they were making a principled decision,” said John Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Retired Post Editor Martin Baron, on social mediasaid the decision showed “troubling spinelessness at an institution famed for courage” and that Trump would see it as another invitation to intimidate Bezos.

In the 19th century, newspapers were strongly partisan, both in their news pages and in their editorials. Even as a trend toward unbiased news reporting emerged in the twentieth century, the editorial pages remained idiosyncratic and the two functions were kept separate.

As recently as 200892 of the country’s 100 largest newspapers supported Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain for president. But according to the Presidency Project, only 54 people chose between Trump and Joe Biden in 2020. Assuming there were even fewer this year, Woolley said they don’t even plan to count.

The Tampa Bay Times told its readers this week that it was focusing its editorial endorsements on local races where it could be more useful. “We can’t think of a single reader who told the editors this past election cycle that they needed our help deciding how to vote for president. Not one,” the newspaper wrote in an unsigned story.

Research has shown that readers pay little attention to messages of support and that in a digital world, many do not understand the distinction between regular news stories and advocacy-based editorials. In many cases, chain ownership took the decision out of the hands of the local editorial staff. At a time when the news business is struggling, they didn’t want to give any reader an excuse to leave.

“They really don’t want to incite or anger the people who don’t like their support,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “The solution is to just not do them.”

That doesn’t seem to appeal to newspapers in two major metropolitan areas with liberal populations. The Post, under Baron during the Trump administration, saw its circulation rise with aggressive political reporting that often angered the former president.

Next to Baron was the decision indicted from the Watergate era with legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris said they left the paper in protest. Three of the Post’s nine editorial board members said they were leaving that role.

Out West Los Angeles Times editorial writer Karin Klein wrote in the Hollywood Reporter she quit the newspaper. Klein said that while Soon-Shiong had the right to impose his will on editorial policies, by expressing disapproval so late in the campaign he was in effect expressing the opposite of the neutrality he claimed to be pursuing. strive.