2 weeks Ago By Therese Bottomly
Close readers will notice the absence of two national columnists whose work used to regularly appear in The Oregonian’s Opinion pages. Eugene Robinson and Ruth Marcus both departed from The Washington Post after strife within the news organization over the role of its owner, Jeff Bezos. Marcus resigned after the Post’s publisher Will Lewis killed a column she’d written criticizing Bezos and his efforts to align the opinion pages more to his libertarian viewpoint.
According to media reports, Amazon founder Bezos also had directed the opinion section to not publish contrary views but limit opinions to support of ideals such as free markets. Marcus’ resignation came a few months after Bezos killed a planned endorsement by the Post’s editorial board of Democrat Kamala Harris for president over Republican Donald Trump. She had worked for the Post in various roles for four decades.
Bezos’ move came at a time his once-contentious relationship with Trump was warming. Critics, including thousands of Post subscribers who canceled, feared he was putting his business interests ahead of editorial independence. Robinson, too, had worked more than four decades at the Post.
He also departed, resigning the column-writing role he had held at the Post since 2005 and citing the Bezos-directed shift in the opinion pages. I probably received more complaints about Robinson over the years than any other opinion columnist. His reliably left-wing take frequently angered conservative readers.
My response was typically this: An opinion section everyone agrees with is neither attainable nor desirable. Or I might recount a phone call I overheard once in the newsroom between longtime Metro columnist Steve Duin and a disgruntled reader. “Perhaps for the sake of your blood-pressure and mine,” Duin said, “you should just stop reading me.
” Some readers will rejoice at the departure of the two liberal Washington Post columnists, for balance. A not-infrequent complaint is we don’t publish enough conservative voices. While we do try for a mix of viewpoints, I would say there are fewer syndicated columns available to us that reliably express cogent right-wing viewpoints.
It probably doesn’t help reader perceptions that conservative columnist George Will has strongly criticized Trump. He still counts as a right-wing voice. As Opinion Editor Helen Jung told a reader, “For each section, we aim to publish a range of opinions on a variety of topics, but columns might not line up exactly in balance.
For one thing, we can only publish what the columnists deliver. ..
. We do try to include a balance of voices -- both to satisfy our diverse readership and to promote consideration of differing views. Even if the selection of op-eds on one particular day feels off to you, we hope the selection over time does hit the mark.
” I have received several queries from left-leaning readers about whether we will stop publishing anything from the Washington Post. “With Jeff Bezos running the Washington Post, I beg The Oregonian to remove any articles or editorials from him,” one reader wrote. “It’s disgusting how they are trying to tell us what to think.
” Ironically, readers who lean right have been complaining for years about what they see as a left-wing bias in Post news articles, which we have long published in The Oregonian. We will continue to check the range of wire service materials available to us, including the Post, and choose the best work for our audience. Changes to the comics, another place where commentary regularly appears, rekindled readers’ dislikes of certain strips.
“Doonesbury,” which has long published on Sundays, returned to daily publication. And the choice of the 40 most-popular strips for Sundays meant “Mallard Fillmore” once again appeared in The Oregonian. I’ve heard from critics of both strips.
“Please admit at least to yourself that ‘Doonesbury’ is addicted to focusing on any perceived flaws in Donald Trump or his policies,” a reader wrote. “Please send his work to the trash bin and stop insulting the truth and the beliefs of half of your subscribers.” Another said, “ ‘MALLARD FILLMORE’ ? Really? Tedious, obvious, oblivious conservative snarks that only your cranky uncle finds funny?” A third wrote in: “I suppose you have to include ‘Mallard Fillmore’ to balance ‘Doonesbury.
’ Except ‘Doonesbury’ has actual characters and long-running story lines but ‘Mallard’ is just a self-righteous preachy duck.” To paraphrase Duin very loosely, just because we publish something doesn’t mean you have to read it, especially if you know it will send your blood pressure through the roof. At least one reader even saw a right-wing bias in our decision to place the comics in alphabetical order when we changed the lineup last month.
The reordering moved “Doonesbury” to the third page of the comics section. His view: “That was a lot of work just to get Doonesbury off page 1 of the Sunday comics!” Reach me at [email protected].
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