Learn this from Bezos and the Washington Post: with hypercapitalists in charge, your news is not safe | Jane Martinson

14 February 2026 at 05:00

His shameful stewardship of a once great title highlights how much we lose when private interest eclipses the public good

Not long after being made Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999, Jeff Bezos told me: “They were not choosing me as much as they were choosing the internet, and me as a symbol.” A quarter of an increasingly dark century later, the Amazon founder is now a symbol of something else: how the ultra-rich can kill the news.

Job cuts in an industry that has struggled financially since the internet came into existence and killed its business model is hardly new, but last week’s brutal cull of hundreds of journalists at the Bezos-owned Washington Post marks a new low. The redundancies that were announced to staff on a video call, the axing of half its foreign bureau (including the war reporter in Ukraine) – not since P&O Ferries have layoffs been handled so badly. Former Post stalwart Paul Farhi described a decision that affected nearly half of the 790-strong workforce as “the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation”.

Lisa Nandy refers Telegraph sale to watchdogs over rightwing media plurality concerns

The Guardian

By:Michael Savage Media editor

12 February 2026 at 13:52

CMA and Ofcom to examine DMGT takeover amid fears merger could curb ‘diverging editorial stances’ in press

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has referred the Telegraph’s proposed sale to the publisher of the Daily Mail to the competition and media watchdogs, weeks after she raised concerns about the consolidation of rightwing newspapers.

Nandy said she was using her powers to refer the £500m deal for the Telegraph titles, which include the Daily Telegraph and its Sunday sister paper, to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the media regulator Ofcom.

Washington Post C.E.O. Will Lewis Steps Down After Stormy Tenure

NYT: Technology

By:Benjamin Mullin · Katie Robertson and Erik Wemple

8 February 2026 at 09:40

His departure came days after the company cut 30 percent of the staff. He will be replaced in the interim by Jeff D’Onofrio, the chief financial officer, the company said.

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