From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media

An opinion piece declaring The Washington Post a dead newspaper walking after layoffs, closures, and an editorial tilt toward Trumpism lit up the threads. It paints a graveyard of “legacy media” owned by hedge funds and billionaires, claims TV is geriatric, and even says Disney pulled Jimmy Kimmel under pressure. It’s a sweeping obituary for the old attention economy, with a shrug that AI and podcasts might inherit the newsroom. But the real autopsy happened in the comments.

Some readers want the government-era guardrails back: “fairness doctrine” nostalgia surged, along with calls to cap how many outlets one owner can control. Others rolled their eyes at the term “legacy media,” arguing it’s marketing to herd people into “social media nonsense.” The spiciest fight was about neutrality: one camp insists the press must stop “picking sides,” while another says refusing to name extremism is how democracy dies. There’s a brutal vibe-check too: people say front pages now read like press releases, and if a famous person doesn’t say it, it vanishes. The Bezos-WaPo thread got dragged in. Memes flew—Democracy dies in the comments, press-release Olympics, and MSNOW jokes—because the internet never misses a pun. Everyone brought receipts, rage, and eye-rolls today.