The coming demise in June of the daily print version of the
Washington Examiner is bad for the Washington region and
worse for what it says about the direction of America.
The Examiner is a free daily tabloid that covers local
news in D.C. and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia but is most
well known for its scathing critiques of the Obama administration
and big government. As of June it will move to a website and weekly
print magazine focused on national politics.
According to a statement from Ryan McKibben, the president of
Clarity Media Group, which owns the Washington Examiner,
“As a result of research and analysis conducted over the past year,
we have determined that there is an opportunity to bring our style
of investigative journalism and keen analysis and commentary to
covering national government and politics. The re-positioned
Washington Examiner will meet that demand.” That’s one way of
looking at it.
Almost 90 current employees will be laid off in the process and
its readers in the D.C. region of the country will lose great local
coverage of politics and other news. That should leave
Washington-area politicians happier and residents more likely to
hear press releases fabricated as stories on nightly TV news, a
dangerous trend going on around the country.
But more importantly the Examiner’s new direction
speaks to the problem with America: the rise of Washington as the
nation’s epicenter of wealth. In essence the paper is saying it
can’t make money as a newspaper so its new business model is to
become one of the many feeding the ever expanding beast of
government.
The company’s press release said as much: “The target readership
for the print weekly will be 45,000 government, public affairs,
advocacy, academia and political professionals in Washington, DC
and state capitals.”
It is not surprising as the Washington Examiner is only
following the pack when it comes to orienting a publication to the
desires of those who make a living either directly or indirectly
from government. The niche it’s entering is as crowded as
Cancun beaches on spring break. Politico is one of the
most prominent publications in the genre that has cropped up in the
past decade as Washington Gucci-fied and has been very successful
gilding its brand on cable news.
But the fact that the Washington Examiner would turn
that direction is ironic for a paper that prides itself on
assailing big government, as the new business model takes for
granted that the leviathan will prosper and special interests with
it.
It is especially so as the original Examiner model was
designed to hold state and local government across the country
accountable to the people. The company registered the
Examiner name in dozens of locations to make it possible
to open papers in many cities and still operates Examiner.com, a
network of local bloggers. (Full disclosure: I worked for the
Baltimore Examiner as editorial page editor from 2006 to
2009, the three years the paper existed.)
But those plans were made before the recession hit and before
Washington solidified its status as the end all be all. The shift
of money to Washington has been fast: In 2000, four counties around
D.C. were the wealthiest in the country. Today, seven of the 10
make that exclusive list.
I don’t begrudge Clarity for wanting to make money. But I wonder
how one more publication targeting Washington’s elite, even one
impugning the Capitol’s ways, will help to shrink government when
the target audience depends on it growing. Meanwhile, the number of
reporters covering state houses around the country has dropped
precipitously and made it easier for those in power to sculpt the
news. It won’t be long before governors and other officials around
the country launch their own portal like Vice President Joe Biden
did with “Being
Biden.” According to the site, “In this audio series Vice
President Biden will tell the story behind a photo – of where he
was, why it matters to him, and how the experience fits into the
broader narrative of this Administration.”
The website is funny in an absurd way, but it won’t be laughable
if his and others like it become the “news.” America needs more
accountability, not more public relations, which is why those from
all political stripes should worry when another paper stops the
presses.
