Jeff Bezos is no longer relentlessly focused on customer satisfaction

3 weeks ago 17

The fallout from the non-endorsement of Kamala Harris astatine The Washington Post is here: more than 200,000 canceled subscriptions, NPR reports. This is astir 8 percent of the paid subscriber base, and the fig of cancellations is inactive growing.

To enactment that successful perspective, successful an Oct. 15th communicative astir Post CEO Will Lewis’s strategy to get much paying subscribers, The New York Times reported that the Post had added 4,000 subscribers since the opening of 2024 done September. Like, I americium really flabbergasted: that’s fifty times arsenic galore cancellations successful 1 play arsenic The Post earned successful the amended portion of a year.

“This is evidently an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favour with Donald Trump successful the anticipation of his imaginable victory.”

Now, determination person been aggregate reports astatine this constituent — from NPR, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The Washington Post itself — that the telephone to halt endorsing candidates came from Jeff Bezos himself. The aforesaid time arsenic Lewis’s bizarre announcement of The Post’s non-endorsement, executives from Bezos’s abstraction company, Blue Origin, met with statesmanlike campaigner Donald Trump.

I accidental I should notation the assorted authorities contracts Bezos’s different businesses person — among them, Amazon’s $10 cardinal NSA contract and Blue Origin’s $3.4 cardinal NASA contract. Trump has antecedently targeted Bezos for The Washington Post’s reporting. A columnist who discontinue the Post over the decision, Robert Kagan, told CNN, “This is evidently an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favour with Donald Trump successful the anticipation of his imaginable victory.” Kagan pointed to the concern contracts arsenic motivation.

Lewis would similar america to permission mediocre Bezos alone. Bezos “was not sent, did not work and did not opine connected immoderate draft,” the CEO told CNN successful the benignant of connection that we successful the concern cognize arsenic a non-denial denial. That is — it is simply a carefully-worded recitation of things Bezos did not do. It doesn’t contradict that Bezos made the telephone for nary endorsement. And today, The New York Times’ Ben Mullin reported that Bezos had expressed reservations astir a statesmanlike endorsement arsenic aboriginal arsenic September.

Bezos made his bones astatine Amazon by relentlessly focusing connected lawsuit satisfaction. Over and over, helium told radical to absorption connected making customers happy. Here’s a amusive punctuation from his 2016 missive to shareholders:

There are galore ways to halfway a business. You tin beryllium rival focused, you tin beryllium merchandise focused, you tin beryllium exertion focused, you tin beryllium concern exemplary focused, and determination are more. But successful my view, obsessive lawsuit absorption is by acold the astir protective of day one vitality.

That’s astir apt bully proposal for moving a business, and it appears to beryllium proposal nether Lewis nor Bezos himself took. By spiking a statesmanlike endorsement, Bezos has created the quality of a struggle of involvement — and successful journalism, that is arsenic atrocious arsenic an existent struggle of involvement due to the fact that present you’ve mislaid the spot of your audience.

(Lewis, though, is nary alien to journalism, since helium does person acquisition arsenic an editor. However, immoderate of that acquisition is being investigated successful the Sunday Times phone hacking scandal, truthful possibly he’s not the champion idiosyncratic to consult connected these matters.)

The blowback is bigger than The Post

Still, if determination is 1 happening Bezos is known for, it’s his cutthroat attack to capitalism. And here, helium has failed astatine that too. The customers person been speaking precise clearly: NPR reports that 3 of the apical 10 stories connected the Post’s tract Sunday were from staffers pissed disconnected astir the killed endorsement. The most-read was by the paper’s beloved humorist Alexandra Petri: “It has fallen to me, the wit columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” When I checked The Post’s tract again today, the apical 2 stories were astir the controversy.

The blowback is bigger than The Post. One happening our tech overlords person been precise unhappy astir lately has been the government’s renewed attack to antitrust nether Joe Biden. What the Post ungraded highlights — besides Will Lewis’s incompetence — is precisely however galore businesses Bezos owns, and however conflicts of involvement could arise. He has skillfully drawn attraction from mean citizens to overreaches of powerfulness successful business. There is, of course, a solution: breaking up businesses that person gotten excessively big.

Well, I conjecture that’s a acquisition for america all. This what happens erstwhile you absorption connected yourself and not connected the customers. Not lone bash they permission you successful droves, they whitethorn really revile you capable to beryllium politically dangerous.

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