The number of newspapers supporting a presidential candidate has declined with the industry’s financial woes over the past two decades, in part because owners believe it makes no sense to alienate some subscribers by taking a clear stand in a period of political polarization.

However, last week, The Washington Post And Los Angeles Times angered readers for precisely the opposite reason: by choosing not to select a favored candidate.

The fallout from both decisions continued Monday, with Post owner Jeff Bezos taking the unusual step of publicly defending the decision in the columns of his own newspaper. Three members of the Post’s editorial board resigned their positions, and some journalists begged readers not to express their disapproval by canceling their subscriptions. Several thousand people have already done so.

Bezos, in a note to readers, said it was a principled position to abandon the endorsements. People don’t care and see it as a sign of bias, he said. His comments appeared hours after NPR reported that more than 200,000 people had canceled their Washington Post subscriptions.

If NPR’s report is true, it would be a blow to a media outlet that loss of money and layoffs of staff despite having over 2.5 million subscribers last year. A Post spokeswoman declined to comment on the information.

Subscribers are decreasing in recent days

The Times admitted it lost thousands of subscribers because of its own decision.

The two newspapers reportedly prepared editorials in favor of Democrat Kamala Harris. Instead, at the urging of Bezos and the Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong, they decided not to approve. Post publisher Will Lewis called it “a statement in favor of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

By announcing their decisions in the two weeks after Election Day, however, the newspapers left themselves vulnerable to criticism that their editors were trying not to anger Republican Donald Trump if voters returned him to power. “It seemed like they hadn’t made a decision in principle,” said John Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Retired Post editor Martin Baron on social networkssaid the decision showed “disturbing spinelessness on the part of an institution known for its courage” and that Trump would see it as another invitation to intimidate Bezos.

Mentions have a long history

In the 1800s, newspapers were very partisan, both in their news pages and in their editorials. Even as a trend toward unbiased reporting took hold in the 1900s, the editorial pages remained stubborn and the two functions remained distinct.

As recently as 200892 of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers endorsed either Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain for president. But in 2020, only 54 people made a choice between Trump and Joe Biden, according to the presidential project. Estimating there were even fewer this year, Woolley said they weren’t even planning to count.

Studies have shown that readers pay little attention to endorsements and that, in a digital world, many do not understand the distinction between pure news and advocacy-focused editorials. In many cases, channel ownership has taken the decision out of the hands of local editors. At a time when the news industry is struggling, they didn’t want to give any reader an excuse to leave.

“They really don’t want to piss off or upset people who won’t appreciate their support,” said Rick Edmonds, a media affairs analyst at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “The solution is simply not to do them.”

This did not seem to please newspapers in two large metropolitan areas with liberal populations. The Post, under Baron’s leadership during the Trump administration, saw its circulation increase with aggressive political coverage that often angered the former president.

The Post’s decision aroused anger in many quarters

Besides Baron, the decision was denounced by Watergate-era reporting legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris said they were leaving the paper in protest. Three of the Post’s nine editorial board members they said they were leaving this role.

Out West, Los Angeles Times columnist Karin Klein wrote in the Hollywood Reporter that she left the newspaper. Klein said that while Soon-Shiong had the right to impose his will on editorial policy, by withholding support so late in the campaign he was actually expressing the opposite of the neutrality he claimed to seek.

Indeed, the timing was the only regret expressed by Bezos. “I wish we had made this change sooner than we did, at a time further removed from the election and the emotions surrounding it,” he wrote. “This was inadequate planning and not an intentional strategy.”

In an article about the continuing fallout published Monday on the Post’s website, more than 2,000 people left comments, many of them saying they were leaving. Even former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said she canceled.

“From what I’ve seen over the last few days, the paper very clearly hears its subscribers,” Post media critic Erik Wemple said in an online conversation Monday.

We fear that it is the journalists who will be injured

The protests have alarmed some journalists, fearing that they and their colleagues could end up harmed. The union representing Los Angeles Times workers released a statement last week that “before you hit the ‘cancel’ button, recognize that subscriptions help secure the salaries of hundreds of journalists.

“The more cancellations there are, the more job losses there will be and the less good journalism there will be,” wrote Post columnist Dana Milbank.

It would be better, a commentator on the newspaper’s website said Monday, to boycott Amazon – founded by Bezos – than the Washington Post.

Milbank said he was also angered by the decision. He helped draft a letter of protest signed by some of the newspaper’s columnists. But he noted that other than the approval decision, he saw no evidence of Bezos’ interference in the Post’s editorial operations.

“For the past nine years, I have called Trump a racist and a fascist, adding new evidence every week – and not once have I been silenced,” he wrote. “I have never met or spoken to Bezos.”

The owner said so in his column. “I challenge you to find a single example in these 11 years where I have successfully convinced anyone at the Post in favor of my own interests,” he wrote. “That didn’t happen.”

Some newspapers are bucking the trend of non-support. The Oregonian, for example, reversed its decision not to endorse after remaining neutral in 2012 and 2016. “We heard loud and clear the community’s disappointment with our non-endorsement,” the editor wrote in leader Therese Bottomly in response to a question from Poynter’s Edmonds.

In Cleveland, Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn polled his editorial board about whether to provide presidential support. “We have no illusions about the impact of our presidential support on voters,” Quinn wrote. “If we don’t want to have an impact on voters, why publish something that will anger half our audience? »

He was the one who voted decisively. The Plain Dealer endorsed Harris. Quinn had raised the issue via text message to some of his readers. They felt that a refusal would be a betrayal, he wrote, an act of cowardice.

“That was enough for me,” Quinn wrote. “Our duty is to the readers.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.