“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg signed off on tech reporter Kara Swisher’s dream of buying The Washington Post from Jeff Bezos or the idea that it may even be “time for a new newspaper.”
Swisher said last year that she was working toward assembling a group of investors to purchase the Post, although the billionaire Amazon founder has given no indication he is willing to sell the Washington, D.C. paper.
The Post has suffered an exodus of high-profile reporters and editors in recent months and irked some readers and staffers alike when it announced last year that it would not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Bezos, who took credit for nixing a planned endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, has further annoyed staffers with recent changes to the paper’s opinion page.
Amidst the ongoing drama inside the Post, Swisher reiterated her desire to purchase the paper during Thursday’s episode of “The View,” saying she knows plenty of billionaires who would help.
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“The money is not the issue. The issue is Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to sell it because he sees it as a tool now,” Swisher said on the daytime gabfest.
“Musk has X, and he has this. Now, what’s happening though, is all the really good people are leaving. Ruth Marcus just left, a terrific columnist, the head of P.R. just left, the head of communications, just yesterday, and they’re just losing subscriptions and it’s all due to Jeff’s things,” Swisher said.
“He likes to blame the reporters. They don’t like to change, and I would have agreed 10 years ago, but the reporters do understand that they need to change,” Swisher continued before Goldberg chimed in.
“So, maybe,” Goldberg said as Swisher asked if she wanted to be involved.
“I do,” Goldberg said. “Maybe the idea is… crowdfunding, because I think lots of people would love to be part of a newspaper that had something to say.”
Goldberg said she’s watched crowdfunding do “amazing things,” and feels it could help fix the Post.
“Or maybe it’s time for a new newspaper,” Goldberg said.
BEFORE NON-ENDORSEMENT DECISION, WASHINGTON POST CALLED TRUMP ‘DREADFUL’ AND ‘WORST PRESIDENT OF MODERN TIMES’
The Post did not immediately respond when asked for comment from Fox News Digital.
The “head of P.R.” that Swisher referred to was presumably CCO Kathy Baird, who reportedly announced her resignation this week. The Post has not confirmed her exit.
Bezos announced in February that the opinion section would be focused on writing “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
Earlier this week, longtime Post columnist Ruth Marcus detailed her exit from the paper in a piece for The New Yorker, calling out the paper’s publisher for killing her column critical of Bezos.
“I stayed until I no longer could—until the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, issued an edict that the Post’s opinion offerings would henceforth concentrate on the twin pillars of ‘personal liberties and free markets,’ and, even more worrisome, that ‘viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.’ I stayed until the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, killed a column I filed last week expressing my disagreement with this new direction. Lewis refused my request to meet,” Marcus wrote.
EX-WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST DETAILS DEPARTURE FROM PAPER AFTER EDITOR KILLED COLUMN CRITICAL OF BEZOS
Marcus joined several staffers who have left the Post, including former columnist Jennifer Rubin, who was also very critical of the paper’s owner upon her departure.
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report.
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