I opened Twitter a few minutes ago to see my favorite thing ever: journalists crying big, salty tears over losing their jobs. The Washington Post is making cuts, and the puffed-up writers over there, who think they’re very special and irreplaceable, are having meltdowns. It’s beautiful watching the wokest people on earth suffer. I tried to hold back tweeting out “learn to code” and failed miserably.
A letter went out to employees of the Post that announced the outlet would eliminate 20 current newsroom positions and would not fill 30 open positions going forward.
More details on @washingtonpost layoffs, per memo from Executive Editor Sally Buzbee:
— 20 newsroom positions eliminated
— 30 open positions will not be filled
— WaPo is sunsetting Launcher, its online gaming vertical, and KidsPost, per two sources familiarMemo below: https://t.co/YLr7WyZI8Z pic.twitter.com/vbQDdqeKZL
— Sara Fischer (@sarafischer) January 24, 2023
Katie Mettler, a reporter covering crime and court cases, tweeted out her disappointment at the layoffs. “The Washington Post has started laying off my friends and colleagues. It’s wrong and unnecessary and did not need to happen,” she wrote. “I’m sad and mad and so disappointed in this institution that I care about so deeply. We’re better than this.”
Related: Fake News Corrections Prove That Big Media Reporters Didn’t Watch Johnny Depp Trial
The Washington Post has started laying off my friends and colleagues. It's wrong and unnecessary and did not need to happen. I'm sad and mad and so disappointed in this institution that I care about so deeply. We're better than this.
— Katie Mettler (@kemettler) January 24, 2023
Mettler did not, however, resign in protest. She did change her banner to this hilarious virtue signal, though, that demands a “diverse, inclusive, and fair Washington Post.” I’m sure her friends standing in the unemployment line feel better after seeing that tweet.
Why doesn't @kemettler resign in protest? Quit Katie! That'll show 'em! If your employer is so unfair, why do you want to keep working for them? pic.twitter.com/587ETMcuWK
— Megan Fox (@MeganFoxWriter) January 24, 2023
The new video game reporting arm of the Post called Launcher got the axe, along with the journalists who worked there. Gaming journalists tend to be the worst of the far-left journalists outside of social media reporters like Taylor Lorenz (whose future is still unknown).
Washington Post is closing Launcher, its video game vertical that developed a reputation for excellent reporting in games media. https://t.co/MB3sUVbY1J pic.twitter.com/nszAOIaWWH
— IGN (@IGN) January 24, 2023
welp, it's official! I've been laid off from @washingtonpost @LauncherWP, alongside some of my talented and hard-working colleagues. I'll be looking for work and trying to figure out next steps from here. thank you so much for following along until now
— Shannon Liao (@Shannon_Liao) January 24, 2023
please think of my colleagues first and consider a place for them if you can.
as for me: i am staying at the Washington Post. i am moving to the Style section to remain as their games journalist.
this isn’t bitter sweet. it’s bitter. i wish my team was with me. it’s not fair.
— Gene Park (@GenePark) January 24, 2023
Today The Washington Post decided to lay off five members of the Launcher team and sunset the site. I’m heartbroken to lose @LeaderGrev, @JhaanElker, @pithyalyse, @Shannon_Liao and @Vahn16 to The Post's layoffs. 🧵
— Mike Hume (@MikeHumePost) January 24, 2023
I did a little research into what was being published over there on Launcher and found this gem about the television show “Last of Us.”
There’s a last interpretation, one that’s less charitable. The kiss is clearly nonconsensual, a grim fictionalization of rape culture and the kind of brutish behavior so many people suffer even in our current non-apocalypse. (You can read this as thoughtful critique or thoughtless reproduction.) And perhaps the showrunners, who are men, did not think about whether it might be cruel or send a weird message to subject one of the show’s most prominent female characters (so far) to an even worse fate than she suffered in the game, and in a more lurid way at that…We already knew that Tess wanted more from Joel than she got. We already get the horrors of this apocalypse. But beyond that, for all its glances and gruffness, the show is light on meaningful characterization. Which is what makes settling on an interpretation so difficult — and reading the scene as indulging in brutality for its own sake so easy.
It’s hard to believe Jeff Bezos didn’t find that prose worthwhile. My God! Where will we go now for woke commentary about woke TV shows no one watches? What will we do without hyperventilating journalists attaching rape culture theory to fictional television shows? It’s truly a future no one can imagine.
Just kidding. We’re all laughing.
The journalists at the Post are some of the worst in the business. They’ve made it their job to harass private citizens over politics, dox small YouTubers for getting bigger ratings than them in the Johnny Depp court coverage, and lie to the public about their political enemies. They are an arm of the Democrat Party. If they want to continue that work, they should go work for the DNC and stop pretending to be objective journalists.
If the people who work at the Washington Post want to be successful in journalism, they should start reporting actual news instead of carrying water for a political party. Why don’t they ask tough questions of Democrats? Why did they sit on the Hunter Biden laptop story? Why don’t they dig into government corruption when Democrats are in office? If they’d answer those questions honestly, maybe they’d realize why the Post‘s model of journalism is failing. No one wants to read lies.
Last month, a video was leaked from an internal town hall meeting where the staff was told things weren’t going well. It didn’t go smoothly but it gave me a chuckle.
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