This is a sad but inevitable moment for me. The Washington Post will no longer be on my doorstep.
Why? It's a long story. Or maybe a short story, simply because the printed newspaper provides so little content worth reading anymore.
When I moved to Washington DC in 1989, reading the Post was one of the great thrills of being here and one reason why I wanted to live here. Its expertise in reporting was a marvel, whether about science, government, politics, books, culture, food or travel. The most knowledgeable reporters on each topic presented lengthy and in-depth articles that simply could not be found anywhere on a daily basis, not even in The New York Times (which is another sad story).
I'm not sure when the love affair ended. Was it the day they put riding lawn mowers on the front page to excite suburban readers? Or perhaps it was when I realized that the paper's conservative owners insisted on utter silence about significant labor issues - and banned meaningful coverage of unions as a consequence of their historic battles against those who dared to urge fair wages and conditions for the newspaper's lowliest workers (including some reporters).
No, I think my turning point was in reading its many editorials urging the invasion of Iraq. The floodgates opened. All the griping I had heard from colleagues about the newspaper's incestuous relations with the powerful suddenly took hold. The Watergate era was an anomaly, I realized. Post's reputation for speaking truth to power was a lie. Instead, power spoke to the Post, and it was printed as gospel.
I've known many friends who unsuccessfully sought jobs at the Post. I never even tried. Until recently I overlooked their complaints that the paper maintained an incestuous and politically correct regiment of hiring that excluded throngs of qualified applicants in favor of supplicants and incompetents who fulfilled mysterious requirements that seemed to have nothing to do with journalistic skill.
I just kept reading, and thinking that a paper of such renown must know what it's doing. I was wrong.
In recent years the Post just got worse. More insular. Less comprehensive. Utterly self-conscious. And, as was always was the case even its best days, arrogantly disconnected from the local concerns of the city and citizens it pretended to cover.
The final blow? My subscription rate is going up. When a newspaper becomes too expensive and unreadable to be worth the effort of carting stacks of crinkly newsprint to the dumpster, you know it's over. Good Bye, The Washington Post.