It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.
There also used to be a more robust local Metro section.
While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight.
So the Post will avoid staying on autopilot by… not making endorsements? How lazy. Sounds a lot like switching on the autopilot to me.
A paper with guts would take a principled stand via an endorsement… which the editorial staff was already prepared to do. Instead, in the absence of an endorsement, you hoped us readers would make up our own minds, and when we made up our minds that we couldn’t trust the Post and our collective reaction was to cancel our subscriptions, we get remarks about how important this paper is to the world. But it doesn’t matter how credible, trusted, or independent the paper’s voice might be if it’s not used.
Americans don’t trust the news media because of this precise example. We want news that gives us the facts and truth. The fact is, an endorsement was forthcoming, and if it’s true there was no quid pro quo, then there shouldn’t be any issues with it being published now. Doing so would go a long way to restoring lost credibility.