Gutting of the Washington Post
I know a lot of people in the world are sad about the massive firings at the Washington Post, which follows on the heels of the closing of the Kennedy Center for two years (to likely have everything memorable about the building destroyed), which follows on the heels of the destruction of the East Wing. I know these things are not related in the sense that two different entities are dismantling Washington institutions, but they are connected in my brain because they are my childhood.
The Washington Post is our local newspaper. Maybe people read it all over the world, but it was designed to cover our local news in addition to global news. When I was little, it told me the movies in my theaters, followed the sports teams in my city, reviewed theater in my area, and covered events on our streets.
Reading the newspaper (fine, most often the Style section) felt impossibly grown-up when I was in grade school. Now, reading the newspaper feels impossibly sad.
3 comments
While I only started reading the Post after I moved to DC after grad school, my husband grew up in DC reading the Post – his father delivered the Post in high school – and we had the paper delivered to our house until recently and our teenager had been reading the Post with meals. It almost feels like we’ve lost a member of our family.
Woodward & Bernstein were a huge reason why I went into journalism (and I know I’m not alone in that…!). And I read Katharine Graham’s memoir and gained enormous respect for her. I had a digital Post subscription for many years (and it was dirt cheap — one reason I hated to give it up! lol), but I had to do it last year. It’s so sad to see what it’s become.
I am incredibly sad about the state of modern media. I took the free press for granted, but i’m glad that there are some decent independent journalists out there, doing good work.