We ‘could have done something with newspapers‘

You could have done something with newspapers. We didn’t do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newspapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no Government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we’d been wise enough.” 

― Nevil Shute, On the Beach

And then there was the guy who sent me the dead fish.

Funny story actually.

He was running for Alachua County Commission and we (i.e. The Sun) endorsed his opposition.

Hence the dead fish that landed on my desk the next day.

Mullet wrapper. Get it?

On balance it was better than getting, say, an envelope full of a mysterious white substance.

Don’t know whatever happened to my peevish piscine protagonist. Lost track of him when he lost the election.

I only take this little stroll down memory lane to make that point that I’ve always felt like I got into the newspaper business at the right time and got out at the right time.

When I graduated from UF’s ‘J’ school Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were pretending to be newspaper reporters.

Watergate exploded…because of newspaper reporters.

Richard Nixon was history…because of newspaper reporters.

How did we get from there to here?

To the point that we’re calling “legacy” news organizations “the lamestream media,” and decrying the evils of the “corporate media”?

I say I got into the newspaper business at the right time because thanks to Watergate, reporters were all of a sudden the “good guys.”

And I got out at the right time: Just about one year after The New York Times sold The Gainesville Sun – my employer of 37 years – to a Daytona Beach, um, entrepreneur.

Who in turn sold it – along with a slew of other papers – to a venture capital fund that had no interest in journalism.

All it wanted to do was maximize profits by selling off (and leasing back) the land and buildings the newspapers owned. And then by eliminating reporters, editors and support staff until only skeleton crews remained.

These days, of course, billionaire bros have begun to buy up the really prestigious papers as vanity toys.

Which brings me to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

I get it that Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos can do anything they want to do with their vanity toys…um…I mean their newspapers. The Golden Rule being that he who has the gold makes the rules.

Listen, I was editorial page editor of The Sun for 30 years. During which time I wrote literally hundreds of endorsements for local, state and national candidates.

I used to tell my readers that endorsements were like anything else in the paper. They are there to be read or not, as readers choose. Readers can agree or disagree with them, as they choose. They can take them into the voting booth with them. or they can line their bird cages with them, as they choose.

And here’s a true confession: As a career liberal editorial writer, I was obliged over the years to write many candidate endorsements that I did not agree with.

That’s because I worked for a publisher. And the publisher…see the aforementioned Golden Rule.

I used to fantasize, while sitting in front of my keyboard, of starting one of those endorsements with “The Sun recommends voting for Vacuous Vinnie because he hasn’t actually been indicated for anything. Yet.”

But I never did. Because I was a professional. And it was my job to adhere to The Sun’s editorial policies whether I agreed with them or not.

In fact, looking back, the endorsements I wrote for candidates I didn’t like are probably my best. If only because I had to look especially hard to find reasons why anybody should vote for them.

Which brings me back to Soon-Shiong and Bezos and their vanity toys…um…i mean the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

I hear a lot of billionaire bros have been gravitating to Trump. Which is Jake with me because billionaire bros “are never wrong” (to paraphrase a popular Dr. Pepper ad).

If the bros in charge of the Times and Post wanted to endorse Trump, they could have ordered their editorial boards to endorse Trump.

Even if the editorial board members preferred Harris – which apparently they did. They are professionals. They would have done their jobs. Or they would have quit as a matter of conscience.

(Conversely the papers could have endorsed Harris. But the bosses are billionaire bros so…no.)

But to decide not to endorse at all?

In arguably the most consequential election in American history?

After decades of routinely endorsing candidates running for offices all the way from City Hall to the White House?

Sorry bros, but that’s just…

Gutless.

Gutless. Gutless. Gutless.

“We have a license to get into the argument of public life,” Meg Greenfield, the late, great editorial editor of the Washington Post, once wrote.

But that was before great newspapers became vanity toys for billionaire bros.

Were the bros afraid that Trump, if elected, would retaliate against their other far-flung billionaire bro enterprises?

Nah! That can’t happen here. And certainly not to billionaire bros, who qualify as the new Masters Of The Universe (to paraphrase from one of my favorite Tom Wolfe novel.)

Welcome to the lamestream media bros. You may not have run your vanity toy into the ground to the extent that fellow BB Elon Musk has ruined the social media animal formerly known as Twitter.

But keep at it. You’ll get there.

Remember those two reporters that Robert Redford and Dustin Hofmann pretended to be?

This is what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – breakers of Watergate – said in a joint statement after Bezo’s decision that the Post will not endorse in this presidential election,

“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy.”

Like I said.

I got into the newspaper business at the right time.

And I got out at the right time.

Before venture capital privateers decided to grind up their newspapers until they’ve squeezed out the very last drop of juice.

Before billionaire bros decided that the best newspapers on the east and west coast were nothing but vanity toys to play with as they see fit.

Getting into the newspaper business was a labor of love for me.

Getting out became a moral imperative.

Ron Cunningham, Paris, Tuesday, Oct. 29.