Jeff Bezos is now not relentlessly centered on buyer satisfaction

The fallout from the non-endorsement of Kamala Harris at The Washington Put up is right here: greater than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR experiences. That is about 8 p.c of the paid subscriber base, and the variety of cancellations continues to be rising.

To place that in perspective, in an Oct. fifteenth story about Put up CEO Will Lewis’s technique to get extra paying subscribers, The New York Occasions reported that the Put up had added 4,000 subscribers because the starting of 2024 by September. Like, I’m truly flabbergasted: that’s fifty instances as many cancellations in a single weekend as The Put up earned within the higher a part of a 12 months.

Now, there have been a number of experiences at this level — from NPR, The Columbia Journalism Evaluate, and The Washington Put up itself — that the decision to cease endorsing candidates got here from Jeff Bezos himself. The identical day as Lewis’s weird announcement of The Put up’s non-endorsement, executives from Bezos’s area firm, Blue Origin, met with presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Lewis would really like us to go away poor Bezos alone. Bezos “was not despatched, didn’t learn and didn’t opine on any draft,” the CEO informed CNN within the form of assertion that we within the enterprise know as a non-denial denial. That’s — it’s a fastidiously worded recitation of issues Bezos did not do. It doesn’t deny that Bezos made the decision for no endorsement. And right this moment, The New York Occasions’Ben Mullin reported that Bezos had expressed reservations a couple of presidential endorsement as early as September.

The blowback has been so intense that Bezos has taken it upon himself to elucidate the choice in The Washington Put up. “I’d additionally wish to be clear that no quid professional quo of any type is at work right here,” he wrote. As a substitute, he claimed that it was “a principled resolution.” That it was introduced so near the election was just a bit whoopsy-doodle that Bezos claims was “insufficient planning.”

To again the choice, Bezos writes concerning the nosedive belief in media has taken. It’s true that fewer individuals belief the media than earlier than, however which will even be as a result of individuals don’t essentially know as many reporters anymore. Within the days of wholesome native journalism, reporters had been your folks and neighbors, regular individuals that you simply interacted with regularly on the grocery retailer. That’s now not the case; journalists are skinny on the bottom, and wildly outnumbered by PR individuals. Fox Information, specifically, has gone out of its technique to sow mistrust. Dumping on different publications is a major technique for drumming up Substack subscriptions — simply ask Bari Weiss.

However I don’t count on the founding father of Amazon to know this historical past any greater than I count on him to know tips on how to function The Put up’s CMS. And apart from, the belief in media factor is a distraction. The op-ed is a transparent try at harm management — an try and cease the bleeding. It’s too little, and too late.

I suppose I ought to point out the varied authorities contracts Bezos’s different companies have — amongst them, Amazon’s $10 billion NSA contract and Blue Origin’s $3.4 billion NASA contract. Trump has beforehand focused Bezos for The Washington Put up’s reporting. A columnist who stop the Put up over the choice, Robert Kagan, informed CNN, “That is clearly an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump within the anticipation of his attainable victory.” Kagan pointed to the enterprise contracts as motivation.

Bezos would additionally like us to go away poor Bezos alone. “I’d additionally wish to be clear that no quid professional quo of any type is at work right here,” he wrote. “Dave Limp, the chief government of one in all my corporations, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed after I came upon, as a result of I knew it will present ammunition to those that wish to body this as something apart from a principled resolution. However the reality is, I didn’t know concerning the assembly beforehand.”

Bezos made his bones at Amazon by relentlessly specializing in buyer satisfaction. Time and again, he informed individuals to concentrate on making clients pleased. Right here’s a enjoyable quote from his 2016 letter to shareholders:

There are various methods to heart a enterprise. You may be competitor centered, you may be product centered, you may be know-how centered, you may be enterprise mannequin centered, and there are extra. However for my part, obsessive buyer focus is by far essentially the most protecting of day one vitality.

That’s most likely good recommendation for working a enterprise, and it seems to be recommendation neither Lewis nor Bezos himself took. By spiking a presidential endorsement, Bezos has created the looks of a battle of curiosity — and in journalism, that’s as dangerous as an precise battle of curiosity as a result of now you’ve misplaced the belief of your viewers.

(Lewis, although, isn’t any stranger to journalism, since he does have expertise as an editor. Nevertheless, a few of that have is being investigated within the Sunday Occasions cellphone hacking scandal, so possibly he’s not one of the best particular person to seek the advice of on these issues.)

Nonetheless, if there’s one factor Bezos is understood for, it’s his cutthroat strategy to capitalism. And right here, he has failed at that, too. The purchasers have been talking very clearly: NPR experiences that three of the highest 10 tales on the Put up’s website Sunday had been from staffers pissed off concerning the killed endorsement. Essentially the most-read was by the paper’s beloved humorist Alexandra Petri: “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” Once I checked The Put up’s website once more right this moment, the highest two tales had been concerning the controversy.

“Now greater than ever the world wants a reputable, trusted, unbiased voice,” Bezos writes. That is true. It’s additionally why he shouldn’t have employed Will Lewis within the first place. A man concerned in a cellphone hacking scandal is solely not credible. Between Lewis and the pulled endorsement, it’s clear Bezos doesn’t perceive his clients. I’m wondering if he even understands credibility.

The blowback is larger than The Put up. One factor our tech overlords have been very sad about recently has been the federal government’s renewed strategy to antitrust below Joe Biden. What the Put up scandal highlights — apart from Will Lewis’s incompetence — is precisely what number of companies Bezos owns, and the way conflicts of curiosity might come up. He has skillfully drawn consideration from regular residents to overreaches of energy in enterprise. There’s, in fact, an answer: breaking apart companies which have gotten too large.

Effectively, I suppose that’s a lesson for us all. That is what occurs once you concentrate on your self and never on the purchasers. Not solely do they go away you in droves, however they might truly revile you adequate to be politically harmful.

Replace, October twenty eighth: Provides Jeff Bezos’s Washington Put up op-ed explaining why he selected to shoot his personal newspaper within the foot.