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AUGUST 30, 2022

Cooper on TAP

Billionaires Are an Unreliable Foundation for a Free Press

Jeff Bezos won't cut a check to prevent layoffs at The Washington
Post, even after years of profits.

The Washington Post is in business trouble, reports

**The New York Times**
.
After years of profitable operation and several expansions, it is on
track to lose money in 2022 for the first time since Amazon oligarch
Jeff Bezos bought it in 2013 for $250 million. Publisher Fred Ryan is
reportedly considering several options, including cutting about a tenth
of the 1,000-person staff.

On one level, it is rather baffling that Bezos seemingly won't simply
write a check to cover any shortfall. In the first instance, the

**Post** has returned him a tidy profit over the years, and it doesn't
seem unreasonable to expect him to plow a bit of that back into the
paper to float it over a rough patch, so as to give it time to regroup
and try out new revenue strategies. Businesses do that kind of thing all
the time.

More importantly, Bezos has an incomprehensibly vast fortune: $153
billion at
time of writing, according to

**Forbes**. He could finance the

**Post**'s entire payroll a hundred times over with a tenth of that. A
few million to top up a modest shortfall would literally be a rounding
error for him. And it's not like he's any stranger to throwing money
around-indeed, he reportedly spent about twice as much

on his 471-foot personal yacht than he did on the

**Post**.

But Bezos is far from the first oligarch to dabble in owning big media
properties only to turn into a Dickensian coupon-clipping miser the
moment the place starts losing money. Laurene Powell Jobs bought

**The Atlantic** in 2017, but when the pandemic tanked its revenue, the
magazine laid off 17 percent of its staff
.
Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon did the same thing

to

**Fortune** magazine for the same reason. Even eBay billionaire Pierre
Omidyar apparently got tired of putting money

into The Intercept this year.

It's all the more odd given that owning a prestigious newspaper or
magazine serves many important functions for the sensible oligarch. It
is an easy way to launder one's reputation, a place to throw big
conferences or parties where one can hobnob with political elites, and
best of all, subtly influence a big chunk of the reporting class-for
instance, pushing them away from looking into one's private
indiscretions
.
It's at least as useful as setting up a philanthropic foundation, if
not more so.

Right-wing billionaires understand this perfectly well. They are happy
to dump money into conservative media by the barrel
,
because they view it as an investment in their broader political
project.

Alas for the

**Post**, it seems the rest of the billionaire class likes playing with
enormous boats

a lot more than they like subsidizing journalism.

~ RYAN COOPER

Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter

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The Coming Republican Inquisition

Biden has been spared the harassment of congressional investigations.
That could change for the worse in November-unless Democrats can hold
the House. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

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Implementing Student Debt Relief Is Critical

There are a lot of ways the government can mess this up. BY DAVID DAYEN

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These Progressives Won in the Suburbs. Can They Survive in 2022?

Two state legislators in Pennsylvania work to build on past successes,
in a new political environment. BY DAVIS GIANGIULIO

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