Post-apocalypse

Jeff Bezos doesn’t understand why people liked The Washington Post. Therefore, he might as well wreck it.

When I was barely making enough money to pay my rent and was eating Ramen noodles and bagged salad for dinner every night, I still scraped up enough money to buy a Sunday copy of The Washington Post every week.

Later, I subscribed to the weekly edition of the newspaper, and then, when it went online, the digital version.

For most American journalists in the 1990s and early 2000s — especially those of us aspiring to break into the business — The Washington Post was very nearly the platonic ideal of what you wanted a big-city newspaper to be. It had everything: Serious news coverage, biting editorial columns and cartoons, and a very lively “Style” section and Sunday magazine.

The New York Times might (arguably) have been the paper of record, but The Washington Post was a lot more fun to read.

But over the past two years, the paper’s multi-multi-multi-billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, has gradually tightened his grip on the newspaper. As a result, many of the most entertaining writers and artists have decamped to other publications. I canceled my subscription last year and have seldom regretted it.

The Washington Post has become a little bit like “The Simpsons” for me — something I once loved, but which is now sad to look at.

The news that Bezos has just laid off 300 employees — after earlier laying off 200 employees — surprised no one who has been following the paper’s decline. Among the victims of Bezos’ axe, reportedly, are the sports section, arts and cultural news, the book review and most international coverage. One sports reporter was laid off while they were covering the Winter Olympics in Italy. The paper’s Ukraine correspondent was laid off while she was covering a battle in Kyiv.

The assumption by most people on the Internet is that Bezos is killing The Washington Post because it’s been a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, and Bezos wants government contracts from the Trump Administration. In his second term, the President has made it very clear that he’s open to obvious bribery and flattery, and that he will punish people who are not willing to pay him protection money.

There’s certainly an aspect of that — how could anyone assume anything different? Bezos sat behind Trump during his 2025 inauguration (next to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Elon Musk of X), and then used his Amazon Studios to bankroll the truly dreadful “Melania” documentary to the tune of $70 million. That reportedly includes a $28 million payment directly to Mrs. Trump for the “rights” to her story and $32 million for marketing.

By the way: So far, “Melania” has made back $9.5 million of its $40 million production budget, all in order to attain a 6 out of 100 positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. Incidentally, if you listened to last Saturday’s show, all of the reviews I quoted were real:

It’s pretty clear that Bezos knew what way the wind was blowing and decided he would also blow.

There’s more, though, to Bezos’s affection for the Trump Administration. An aspect of the Biden Administration that was under-reported in the media — and not well promoted by the Biden White House — was that for the first time in decades, the federal government was beginning to target big monopolies for anti-trust investigations. One of the companies it was focused on was Amazon; Biden Administration officials suggested that either Amazon should be broken up into smaller companies, or regulated like a utility.

Needless to say, this was not good news for Bezos. With Trump’s return to the White House, he no longer needs to worry about the federal government putting any restrictions on Amazon — just as long as he keeps signing checks that are Pay to the Order of You-Know-Who.

But is Bezos gutting The Washington Post solely to curry favor with Trump? I honestly don’t think so.

In the video game “Sim City,” users were given the power to build their own city, which would populate itself with digital people. You could form a landscape (including hills, valleys and waterways), design highways, and decide where landmarks and neighborhoods would go. It was like a digital model train set and I found it addicting.

But because it was played in something like real time, a game could literally last for days or even weeks — if you wanted it to.

Or — if you were bored — you could send a disaster to wreck your town. I think in the classic version, the disasters included an earthquake, a flood, a fire or Godzilla. You could even really torture your digital citizens and send all of the disasters at once.

I’ve begun to think as Jeff Bezos as the guy who’s been playing “newspaper publisher” for 10 years and now he’s getting bored, so he’s decided to wreck it.

I have had almost no experience with the super-rich, but I have a had a lot of experience with super-smart anti-social tech-nerds, and they get bored easily. What Bezos is doing to The Washington Post is exactly what super-smart anti-social tech-nerds do when they’re bored.

He’s a child who has spent days constructing an intricate model from Lego bricks, and then gets tired of it, and decides to smash it. Only he’s not doing it with Legos, he’s smashing a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper.

There is a belief among tech-bros that you have to “reinvent” things every so often. It’s called “creative destruction,” but sometimes it’s simply “change for the sake of change,” which means less “creation” and more “destruction.” What’s the Silicon Valley mantra? “Move fast and break shit.”

This, incidentally, is why your favorite software package or smart-phone app keeps moving the buttons and features around every time they do an update. It doesn’t matter that you liked the app just the way it is — the people who make it got bored.

And that gets to yet another reason I think Bezos is gutting The Washington Post. I don’t think he has any concept of why people would like to read a certain publication, or what made the Post so beloved by so many loyal readers. He knew it was successful, but he doesn’t understand the formula, so he’s tinkering with it and making it worse.

When’s the last time you think Jeff Bezos plopped a handful of quarters into a newspaper box to buy one? 1995? Do you think he has a favorite magazine and he rushes to the store every month to buy it? Doubtful.

I’m reminded of the time I stopped at a 7-Eleven type place on the way to work to get a cup of coffee. There was no coffee. The pots were cold.

I said the clerk “Do you know you’re out of coffee?” He rolled his eyes and snorted and said, “I don’t drink coffee.”

Why would Jeff Bezos need a sports section or a style section? He doesn’t read those. I’m reminded again of “The Simpsons,” and the episode where Homer invents a make-up gun and blasts Marge in the face with eye-shadow, blush and lipstick.

“Women aren’t going to like being shot in the face,” Marge says.

“Women will like what I tell them to like!” Homer replies.

You don’t like Jeff Bezos’ changes? Too bad! You’ll like what he tells you to like!

A few people — including The Washington Post itself — have suggested that the newspaper has begun to lose so much money (in part, I’d argue, because of Bezos’s meddling) that he had to do something to stem the losses.

The Washington Post indeed lost $100 million last year, which sounds like a lot, except that Amazon grossed $574,800,000,000 last year. If my math is correct, Amazon grosses 10 times more a day than the Washington Post lost in the entire year.

Bezos himself is the fourth-richest person in the world — worth an estimated $239 billion. Again, if my math is correct, the Washington Post could lose $100 million per year for the next 2,000 years and not make much of a dent in his fortune.

It’s not about the money. And while there’s obviously a political component, I don’t think it’s entirely about trying to suck up to Donald Trump. (After all, not only could Bezos subsidize The Washington Post’s losses until the heat death of the universe, he also could buy and sell the Trump family multiple times over.)

Over at Talking Points Memo (pay link), in a column yesterday titled “‘Do You Speak Billionaire?’ and Other Stories From the Fall of the Washington Post,” Josh Marshall has come to a similar conclusion — it’s not all about politics:

You’re a billionaire and somehow you couldn’t manage to be the owner of a storied newspaper. If you can cover the losses, how hard can that be? And if you’re not willing to cover the losses, how hard can it be? You’re already down on the people who run it. You’ve built Amazon (…)

So the answer is: fuck this whole thing. The staff sucks. The readership sucks. This is when the self-immolation cuts start. If there’s one thing a local paper needs, one thing a metro paper needs, it’s sports. If you can’t do sports, which has a mass audience, you can’t do anything. Maybe you decided in a hard-headed moment that you can’t fund an international section. The Times and the Journal will do that. Not us. It’s not crazy. When you cut your sports section, it’s because you actually don’t want the paper to exist anymore.

I think Jeff Bezos is bored with The Washington Post. It’s not fun any more.

I also, frankly, think he doesn’t know why people were subscribing to The Washington Post for all those years.

Lucky for him, that problem is soon going to solve itself. The more he rips out of it everything that made it valuable to its customers, the fewer subscribers he’ll need to worry about.

Top 55 of 1965

Thank you to everyone who tuned in New Year’s Eve to hear our broadcast from “December 31, 1965,” and special thanks to Scott Fybush, who recorded the news for us from the “Mutual Broadcasting” newsroom. Also thanks to WRCT for allowing me to pre-empt several shows, as well as Chief Engineer Carmen Ting and “Steve the Roach” of the Deep Blues Hour for technical support.

Very special thanks to my long-suffering wife, Denise, for keeping me plied with hot tea throughout the three hours, because if you listened, you know I had very little voice that week. I am slowly recovering from a bout of the “super flu” that turned into bronchitis.

One technical note you might find interesting —

Because I wasn’t feeling well, I decided to do the show from my home studio, rather than WRCT. Early on, when Steve and I were testing the remote feed, we realized there was approximately a 30 to 60 second delay from the time the audio was sent to the network and when it was broadcast over 88.3 FM. That was an obvious problem on a New Year’s Eve show, because you want to announce 12 midnight as close to accurately as possible.

On the night of the broadcast, in the room adjacent to my basement studio, I tuned one of my trusty Zenith Trans-Oceanic radios to WRCT, started a song on the CD player, and started a timer. Then I listened to the playback from the next room:

When I heard the song on the radio, I hit the button again. The delay on Dec. 31 was about 42 seconds.

At 11:56, I pulled up the NIST atomic clock (time.gov) on my laptop and when it counted down to 11:59:18 p.m., I said “happy new year!” and played the WRCT legal ID. Forty-two seconds later (the most important number in the universe is always 42, after all) we announced the new year, just as NIST flipped to 12:00:00. We were about as close as we could get.

Several people have asked if we will re-broadcast the show — I don’t think so, because my voice was so weak and raspy that I found it hard to listen to myself. I appreciate everyone who stuck with me.

But I may re-create it soon during some holiday weekend; follow me here or on social media (Facebook, Mastodon, Bluesky) to find out when I announce it. I have to kick this damned cough first.

“Pen Avenue” for December 2025

Here is December’s “Pen Avenue,” my cartoon for Print, Pittsburgh’s East End newspaper.

Sorry for the delayed posts — I’ve been sick for most of the last three weeks and things got away from me.

Print is not available online; you can only read it in (what else?) print. It’s available at Giant Eagle and other stores in Pittsburgh’s East End, or subscribe on the website.

“Pen Avenue” for November 2025

Here’s this month’s “Pen Avenue,” my cartoon for Print, Pittsburgh’s East End newspaper.

Those Pittsburghers of a certain age will remember Pa Pitt, the personification of Pittsburgh popularized by the late Cy Hungerford, cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for almost 50 years. I have to admit, getting to draw Pa Pitt gave me goosebumps and I’m tempted to do it more often.

The cartoon itself is based on a 1992 cartoon by another legendary cartoonist Herb “Herblock” Block of the Washington Post, called “Your name Clinton?” I hope neither Mr. Hungerford or Mr. Block, wherever they are, are mad at me for stealing their ideas; I tried to give credit where credit is due.

Here’s Hungerford’s Pa Pitt:

And the Herblock cartoon to which I’m paying homage:

Print is not available online; you can only read it in (what else?) print. It’s available at Giant Eagle and other stores in Pittsburgh’s East End, or subscribe on the website.

You’re in good hands

Working from home today. Landline rings. Caller ID says “Sewickley, PA.” Someday I really need to start taping these calls:

Bill Lowenburg photo via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Hello?

“Hello, sir. This is Justin from your Allstate agent. How are you today, sir?”

(We do not have Allstate Insurance. Also, he does not sound like a “Justin.” He sounds like a non-native speaker of English, at the very least.)

Oh, I’m really good, Justin, how are you?

“I’m fine, sir. This is a courtesy call about your Allstate policy. We’re doing surprise calls to our customers to explain how they can save money.”

Well that’s great!

“Sir, first of all, do you have a house and a car?”

Yes, we have cars.

“How many cars do you have, sir?”

Let me check. (Off-mike) One … two … three … uh … (on-mike) We have eight.

“Oh, my! Eight cars! Well, that is a blessing, sir. To have so many cars. And are these cars owned by you?”

Yes, I own all of them.

“Well, how lucky you are. Tell me, are these cars used for business or personal use?”

Well … a little of both. I mean, they’re demolition derby cars.

“Oh. Well. So would you say they’re more used for business?”

Hmm. I guess about 50/50, because the demolition derby is kind of a hobby, I don’t get paid.

“OK, then. So let’s say personal use. And are all of the cars running?”

Uh … no, only seven are running. The eighth one lost last weekend.

“OK then. So seven cars. What a blessing. Tell me, are they all insured?”

Oh, no. No, you can’t get insurance on demolition derby cars.

“Oh. Well. What about your house? Do you own your home?”

No, we’re squatting here.

“Oh. Well, in that case, we probably can’t help you over the phone. You’d have to go to your local Allstate office.”

Well, I’ll do that, Justin, thank you much.

“You have a blessed day, sir.”

Too lappy, boys

The curse of the social media age is that politeness and kindness don’t make you (in)famous — being nasty does

Some of you know I’m a big fan of Jack Benny, even though he died before I was born. (What difference should that make? I’ve been dying on the radio every weekend for 20 years.)

Benny was probably the greatest American comedian of the 1940s and 1950s, so it’s a shame he’s not better remembered today. He centered Black and female talent — Benny was never shy about giving Eddie Anderson (Rochester) or Mary Livingston punchlines that scored off of him — and he did a lot to mainstream Jewish humor for gentile audiences.

Anyway, I love Jack Benny. Not for nothing does our Internet radio station, Tube City Online Radio, run Jack Benny every Sunday night at 7 p.m., just as it aired on network radio “back in the day.” (We’re currently running shows from 1945 in order. Check it out some Sunday night.)

Though he never completed high school, Benny was well-read. He loved language and he appreciated writers. While other comedians tried to pretend they didn’t use writers, Benny wasn’t above bringing them on stage and mentioning their names. When you see Seth Meyers or Conan O’Brien or David Letterman feature their writers in sketches — that’s a technique more or less invented by Jack Benny.

Benny also was a master of timing and misdirection. He famously got laughs just out of a well-timed stare or an uncomfortable silence. He knew that if he suggested the punchline but stopped short of saying it out loud, the audience would complete the joke in their minds and their laughter would be even louder and longer and more appreciative.

In more recent times, Tina Fey and Seth Meyers have talked about how they hate “clapter.” “Clapter” is when the audience claps instead of laughing because you’ve told a joke that has an obvious punchline and the audience applauds to show they agree with your opinion. It’s the hack who comes out on stage and says, “Hey, how about that Donald Trump? Is that guy a clown or what?” And his audience claps, they don’t laugh.

I like Stephen Colbert, but I find a lot of his punchlines generate “clapter.” To be honest, a lot of Jimmy Kimmel’s political jokes also are designed for “clapter.” Seth Meyers is equally hard on Trump, but his jokes are more circuitous and absurdist; he’s also not shy about making himself the butt of the joke, and that makes me laugh.

Benny used to tell his writers not to make the punchlines “too lappy.” That “You’re throwing it into their laps. Too lappy.”

Since I don’t have a daily radio show, I use social media as my radio show. I try to write a least a couple of jokes every day. Most of them are pretty bad, but some of them make me laugh.

On Sunday night, as the Steelers were falling apart against the Los Angeles Chargers, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate were caving into Republican demands to reopen in government but getting very little in return, other than an empty promise to vote on health insurance subsidies in a few months. So I wrote, “The Steelers defense tonight must be getting coached by Chuck Schumer. But I hear the Chargers have promised to give them a chance to score some points in the fourth quarter.”

I got a fair amount of clapter, but one follower — Dana Simpson, who writes “Phoebe & Her Unicorn” — took me task for a gratuitous smack at Chuck Schumer, and you know what? She was right. It also was a lazy whack at Steelers coaching, which has become a reliable, hacky punchline in Pittsburgh over the last few years, like making fun of the Pirates (which I’ve also done). Like I said, I try to write some jokes every day, but they’re not all gems.

I was thinking about all of this after social media platform Bluesky suspended two people for making what the company called threats of violence. Sarah Kendzior, a best-selling author and former writer for the New York Daily News, Toronto Globe & Mail, and other prominent publication, was suspended after she made fun of an article in the Wall Street Journal by Jon Fasman. Fasman wrote that he had recently “discovered” a “deeply uncool” country music singer who he felt was more or less forgotten. The country music singer was Johnny Cash.

Lots of people dunked on the article — how does anyone grow up in America without knowing who Johnny Cash is? — and Kendzior quipped she wanted to shoot Fasman “just to watch him die,” quoting a line from Cash’s most famous song, “Folsom Prison Blues.” Bluesky called it a “credible threat of violence.”

And then, comedian Patton Oswalt, whose grouchy exterior and profane jokes mask a really sensitive soul, was suspended by Bluesky for making an off-color remark about podcaster Megyn Kelly. In the wake of the release of thousands of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, Kelly has been defending President Trump, who has a well-known interest in the sexual attractiveness of teen-age girls.

Kelly’s remarks have been cringeworthy, even by her (low) standards. Being sexually attracted to 15-year-old girls is no big deal, she suggested this week: “He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds. But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”

Oswalt — who has a 16-year-old daughter — posted some of Kelly’s remarks and then said, “Wood chipper. Feet first.”

Bluesky regarded that as a threat; as if Oswalt was going to kidnap Megyn Kelly and give her the “Fargo” treatment.

The curse of our social media age is that no one gets rewarded for being nice and calm and polite. Calm and sensible doesn’t go viral on TikTok or Twitter; huffing aerosol cans until you pass out or taking massive doses of Benadryl does. What else goes viral? Writing horrible things about other people.

I’ve been on the radio for 20 years and writing professionally since I was 18 years old, and I’ve mostly stayed out of trouble. (Not always, but that’s a story for another time.)

And by staying mostly out of trouble, I also haven’t become rich and famous. That’s the trade-off. As a former boss used to say, “If you want to run with the big dogs, you got to learn to pee in the tall grass.” If you want to get rich and (in)famous from your writing or broadcasting, you have to push the envelope, and sometimes that means going too far and being offensive — and getting fired from your job or kicked off of a platform. Just ask Howard Stern.

I don’t know if either Kendzior or Oswalt should have been suspended from Bluesky. Kendzior’s joke was a bit more open to misinterpretation; if someone didn’t know who Johnny Cash was, and had never heard the song “Folsom Prison Blues,” I guess they could have assumed she really was angry enough to shoot the Wall Street Journal writer. It’s a stretch, but I could see it happening. Oswalt’s suspension is stupid; he’s a world-famous comedian best known for telling raw and sometimes raunchy stories. No one seriously thinks he was going to put Megyn Kelly into a wood chipper.

I suppose the moral of the story, if there is one, is that if you want to avoid getting kicked off of any platform — whether it’s social media, your company’s Slack channel or a radio station — you’d best not be too “lappy.” Make the audience work for the joke, just like Jack Benny did. Don’t go for clapter and don’t make it too obvious. Your fans will appreciate being in on the joke but it will go over the heads of the humorless idiots who control much of the Internet.

Programming notes

Halloween is next week, so this Saturday’s show will feature a Halloween theme, including a salute to Pittsburgh’s own Joe Flaherty, who died last year.

On Sunday night, I’ll be at Arsenal Lanes in Lawrenceville for a Sunday Night Oldies Party from 9 p.m. to 12 midnight. I’ve already got my funny face on for that.

Coming up in a couple of weeks (Nov. 22), we’ll be broadcasting from McKeesport’s annual Salute to Santa Parade, which gets underway along Fifth Avenue at the McKees Point Marina at 11 a.m. I’ll be handling some of the live video commentary.

I’d love to do some more remote broadcasts on Saturdays, but generally no one asks. So if you have a non-profit event in the Mon Valley area and you’d like Uncle Jay to bring the oldies caravan to it from 12 to 3 p.m. on a Saturday, email me at jaythurbershow@gmail.com. There’s no charge for the service (and believe me, it’s worth every cent).

And for those of you who asked, I’m generally at Arsenal on the second and fourth Sundays of each month. The second Sunday is usually indie rock and alternative pop from the 1980s through today, while the fourth Sunday is an old-fashioned Mon Valley style oldies rock ‘n roll fest.

What are you lookin’ at, butthead?

President Trump this week ordered the demolition of the East Wing of The White House to begin construction of a $250 million ballroom that he says will be funded by donations.

Architects have now released this updated rendering of its replacement.

After some Democrats have criticized what they called the defacing of The White House, Republicans put them in headlocks and gave them noogies.

At a news conference at Donald Trump’s White House & Pleasure Paradise, the president dismissed his critics, saying, “why don’t they make like a tree and get out of here?”

Asked for comment, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said “this is the first I’ve heard of any of it.”

More news any moment.