Newspaper Endorsements Are Dinosaurs: Let Them Die

Both the Washington Post and the L.A Times have decided to not endorse any presidential candidate in this election year, one of the most fractious in recent decades. The decisions have prompted much hand-wringing among liberals and progressives, who are bemoaning the matter with the usual florid terms like, “the death of democracy, “the end of free speech,” and all the rest.

Oh, please.

It’s not the lack of endorsements you should pay attention to, but how and why media outlets everywhere have taken to hyping them as somehow far more important than they really are.

A brief recap. It turns out that both decisions are complicated matters: the Post’s editor had in fact drafted an endorsement for Kamala Harris, only to have it killed by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, according to, well, ah, the Washington Post itself. The L. A. Times story is more muddled, as the Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop puts it: the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong claimed—on Twitter, no less—that the Editorial Board “was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation…Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.” As Allsop writes, this fundamentally contradicts the whole point of an endorsement. Then, Soon-Shiong’s daughter Nika Soon-Shiong claimed, in a statement to the New York Times, that the decision to not endorse anyone came about “to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” (Though the paper does not quote her naming Gaza, it’s assumed that’s what she means. Although, we might note, with a grim sense of reality, that journalists and children are being killed in far too many places these days.) Her father stepped in to deny that she had any role in that or other decisions, adding to the murkiness of the story.

On Monday, October 28, Jeff Bezos wrote an op-ed in the Post refuting the charge (made by many) that he had stopped the publication of the op-ed in order to remain in Trump’s good graces, claiming that the move to eliminate endorsements for the foreseeable future had long been in the works because he believes that they “create a perception of bias.”

No, I don’t believe him, but that’s beside the point.

So far, the non-endorsement decisions have led to resignations at both papers and, reportedly, mass unsubscribing amongst readers of both publications (at the time of this writing, the Post’s employees are claiming that 200,000 people have cancelled their subscribers, but that number is hard to verify independently.) Since it’s yet another Trump against Someone year (third time running), all of this is another opportunity for liberals and progressives and their representative media outlets to cry foul and to claim that this is an example of, well, what, exactly?

Newspaper endorsements have never shifted the needle on elections for the simple reason that subscribers to a particular publication are already on board with its politics. The New York Times has endorsed Kamala Harris, with its usual pompous windbaggery, but its endorsement is mostly about the problems with Trump, not the virtues of Harris (who, at the time, had yet to even release details about her agenda, beyond vague ideas). If it had endorsed Trump, that would have been a surprise. Some, like Rick Edmonds at Poynter, describes newspaper endorsements as part of a dying species, a term that implies that they are worth saving.

Oh, please.

Newspaper endorsements of political candidates are not a “dying species,” they are dinosaurs: irrelevant and unremarkable. To mourn their loss is to cling to a fantasy of endorsements as somehow politically significant when, in fact, they are relatively new on the landscape: even the Post did not endorse candidates before 1976. Linked to that fantasy is another, stronger one: that newspapers matter in the same way they did fifty years ago.

Look closely at media outlets like CJR, Poynter, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the L.A Times and anyone else now writing about or speaking about the matter and what you will see is an attempt to make not just endorsements but newspapers and large media outlets seem far more relevant than they are. And it’s not just newspapers: MSNBC, that bastion of tired liberal journalism, has been reeling out major and minor voices, from Mehdi Hasan to Marty Baron, to decry the decisions as somehow harmful to, I don’t know, life on earth itself. To return to my dinosaur metaphor: all of these opinionators make it seem like the lack of political endorsements represents nothing less than the crashing of the meteors that shifted the nature of life itself on the planet.

But the dinosaurs, as adorable as they seem to us now that they’re not clomping around and picking us off in mass numbers, were dinosaurs. Newspapers that still believe that their endorsements mean anything in a fractured media landscape are dinosaurs. MSNBC is a dinosaur, born in the mid-1990s when it seemed like there was room for something that wasn’t quite a major legacy outlet but profitable enough to pay liberal windbags like Rachel Maddow $30 million a year to spout the kind of comforting narratives about patriotism and the American way that its viewers want. MSNBC is a traditional television entity, and its survival is tied to the Big Media Mindset that helps to keep newspapers like the Post and the Times going: the belief that all information and analysis can and should emanate from a few, owned by billionaires and propped up by Big Names like Maddow and Chris Haines. So, of course, it’s going to support the idea that the endorsements story is somehow more meaningful than it really is. And, of course, it’s following the numbers and eyeballs. Today, this is the big story. Tomorrow? Who knows? It will depend on which way the algorithm winds blow.

Let me be clear about where I stand with regard to newspapers and media: I love newspapers and magazines (as I’ve written here), and I think print publications are the best thing to have emerged from the invention of the Gutenberg Press, right up there with books. The future of media does not lie with Substack: a hosting site owned by greedy millionaires who could just as easily pay their writers and create an actual publication but choose, instead, to make them all scrape and beg for subscriptions. That place is not a substitute for actual newspapers and magazines, which can (when they choose to) invest in reporting and analysis and provide healthcare and salaries to their staff. There has been a flood of journalists moving to Substack after losing their jobs, for one reason or another, promising to provide the same kind of work on, what, a few thousands a month, if they’re lucky? The kind of reporting you get from legacy outlets or well-funded (and well-run!) media nonprofits takes a lot of money and time: your chatty, sassy journalist turned influencer might be able to snag, maybe, one or two major interviews with public officials, but at some point readers will want an actual newspaper, with actual journalism, and that is untenable for a lone Substacker, unless said Substacker has the resources to run an entire and well-paid media operation and in that case, well, they should just create a magazine or a newspaper. A reporter moving to Substack is like Mario Lopez or Jennifer Grey appearing on Dancing with the Stars: just so sad, and the sign that you’ve got nowhere else to go.

There is, of course, a serious matter embedded in the endorsements controversy. The fact that the media economy has shifted to the point where billionaire owners can force editorial decisions is a terrible sign, and should serve as yet another warning that journalistic independence is always a fragile entity. It also reminds us that money is not always the best solution, if it comes weighted with conditions and punishments.

But, keep endorsements in perspective and focus on the bigger picture: what kinds of news outlets and writers do you support, and why? If you’re going to push back on your favourite newspapers and magazines, what are your reasons? I subscribe to the New York Times, the L.A Times, and the Washington Post. I have to, as a political writer and media and cultural critic, in order to keep up with the topics of the day. If I had the money, though, I’d rather subscribe to one of those and a hard copy of the Financial Times because reading about the machinations of capitalism (which the FT recounts in loving detail) is more useful and necessary to me than whatever algorithm-riddled sludge the NYT throws up on its website or even its print edition. (I have a web subscription to the FT, but, in case you missed my earlier point, I love print). The problem with newspapers today is not that they don’t provide you with political endorsements: you already knew whom you would vote for. The problem with newspapers today is that they’ve lost sight of their basic functions, like reporting and analysis, and, instead, become part of a weird parasocial relationship with their readers to whom they feel compelled to become everything and nothing, all at once, with fluffy entertainment stories masquerading as news. And for that, dear, sweet Reader: you may have yourself to blame.

Push back against your newspaper, but push back for not covering the news accurately or for featuring yet another fluff piece about some influencer whose name no one will remember in a week’s time. There is plenty to protest when it comes to your newspaper—you know, the one that you should support with actual money and not just by “freeing” its articles from behind the paywall. But do you always protest and take action when you should? Sending both Bezos and Soon-Shiong a message by ending your subscriptions is actually a good idea, because they need to know there are consequences for meddling, but where will that go if you’re not thinking about how to help great media survive? Can you conceive of, for instance, a publicly funded world of journalism that doesn’t have to worry that both these men will decide it’s too much effort to keep these newspapers—and just pull the plug? Are you going to spend, what, $5, $15, $50, $100 a month to support every single one of the excellent journalists who will lose their jobs? Are you going to commit to reading their endless and prattling musings on Substack forever, waiting for them to, somehow, magically return to actual reporting on politics and culture, all without enough money to even fly out to conventions?

Political endorsements are dinosaurs, and you might recall that some fictional characters once tried to bring them back to life, in Jurassic Park. That did not go well.

Move on, move on. The outcry over endorsements is spearheaded by the scraggly soldiers of a legacy media landscape that’s been gutted and refashioned, and pointing to the endorsements issue is like screaming into the dark, “We matter, we matter, we still matter.”

You do, you do. But you have to rethink the terms of your existence.

This essay has been edited to include details about Jeff Bezos’s op-ed, published after it was first posted.

If you really want to support journalism and reporting in media, sure, support legacy publications like WaPo and the L.A Times. They have the money and resources for the kind of reporting we need. I can’t tell you to support the NYTimes because it plagiarises the work of others and lies about a genocide (I’ve written about these problems in my “On Plagiarism” essay, and others.)

But also support independent media, for journalism and writing you’ll never see in the mainstream, like the world’s best and most beautiful magazine, Current Affairs, Electronic Intifada, In These Times, Truthout, and countless others you can find if you look hard enough. These places also support the kinds of journalism we need, and are less likely to include fluff. Support your favourite Substacker and/or me. Support us all consistently. Ideally, you should support some combination of sources, but not everyone can do that (sharing accounts is one way to solve that problem, though that might not be tenable for several reasons.) Your ideal media publications are not the ones with which you agree all the time, but the ones that have an internal coherence of their own: sometimes, that means you won’t like their opinions. That’s fine. You’re a grownup, you’ll survive. But, remember: you get the media you support, not the kind you wish would manifest out of thin, unfunded air.