Washington Post, Los Angeles Times newspaper disapproval fits a trend, but their readers aren’t happy

The number of newspapers endorsing a presidential candidate has declined with the industry’s financial woes over the past two decades, in part because owners feel it makes no sense to alienate some subscribers by taking a clear stand at a time of political polarization.

However, in the last week The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times they angered readers for precisely the 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 columns. Three members of the Post’s editorial staff resigned from their positions, and some journalists asked readers not to express their disapproval by canceling their subscriptions. Many thousands have already done so.

Bezos, in a note to readers, said it was a principled position to drop the endorsements. People basically don’t care and 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 Washington Post subscriptions.

If the NPR report is true, it would be a stunning blow to an outlet that lost money and lost staff despite having over 2.5 million subscribers last year. A spokeswoman for the Post did not comment on the report.

The Times admitted it had lost thousands of subscribers because of its own decision.

Both newspapers reportedly prepared editorials in support of Democrat Kamala Harris. Instead, at the behest of Bezos and the Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong, they decided not to endorse. Post editor 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 papers left themselves vulnerable to criticism that their editors were trying not to upset Republican Donald Trump if voters returned him to power. “It seemed like they weren’t making a principled decision,” said John Woolley, co-director of the Project on the American Presidency at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Martin Baron, retired station editor, on social networkssaid the decision showed “a disturbing lack of spine at an institution renowned for courage” and that Trump would see it as a further invitation to bully Bezos.

In the 1800s, newspapers were heavily partisan in both their news pages and editorials. Even as the trend toward unbiased news set in in the 1900s, the editorial pages remained opinion and the two functions were kept separate.

As recently as 200892 of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers endorsed either Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain for president. But by 2020, only 54 had made a choice between Trump and Joe Biden, according to the presidency project. Considering there were even fewer this year, Woolley said he doesn’t even plan to count.

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

Studies found that readers didn’t pay much attention to endorsements, and in a digital world, many didn’t understand the distinction between straight news and advocacy-backed editorials. In many cases, chain ownership has taken the decision out of the hands of local publishers. At a time when the news business is struggling, they didn’t want to give any readers an excuse to leave.

“They really don’t want to upset people who won’t like the endorsement,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “The solution is not to do them.”

That doesn’t seem to fly with newspapers in two large metropolitan areas with liberal populations. The station, under Baron’s leadership during the Trump administration, has seen its circulation grow with aggressive political coverage that has frequently angered the former president.

Besides Baron, the decision was denounced of the Watergate era, recounting legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris said they were leaving the paper in protest. Three of the nine members of the Post’s editorial board they said they were leaving that role.

Out West, a Los Angeles Times editorial writer, Karin Klein, wrote in the Hollywood Reporter that she was leaving the newspaper. Klein said that while Soon-Shiong had the right to impose her will on editorial policy, making the disapproval so late in the campaign effectively expressed the opposite of the neutrality she claimed to be seeking.