Please Don't Cancel Your Subscription

It's what Donald Trump wants.

To every thing there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to capitulate, and a time, a year or two later, to say you were wrong to do so. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Mitt Romney, and the other members of America’s leadership class bending the knee to Donald Trump haven’t already pencilled onto their calendars—reserved for some future date when it no longer makes any difference—little reminders to express regret. At which time they’ll be congratulated for their candor and deeper wisdom. But history will have their number. If Trump wins, I promise you that long after Amazon.com is forgotten Bezos will be remembered only as the wealthiest among that class of billionaires and other eminent Americans whose cowardice helped clear Trump’s path back to power. (I exclude Elon Musk because, like Trump, he has no moral compass to override.)

A lot of people are at least threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the Washington Post, which Bezos directed not to endorse Kamala Harris for fear Trump would retaliate by cancelling government contracts for Amazon and/or Bezos’s space exploration company Blue Origin. A like number are at least threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the Los Angeles Times, whose owner’s motive for cancelling a planned endorsement is a little harder to pinpoint, but no doubt monetary. Both papers have stated officially (here and here) that they’re returning to decades-old policies of not endorsing, on principle, presidential candidates—a remarkable coincidence were it true. Not least among the problems created by these capitulations is that they compel L.A. Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Washington Post publisher Will Lewis to lie to their readers, which is, to say the least, bad for business when you’re a newspaper. Nina Soon-Shiong, Patrick’s daughter, suggested on X that the real reason was opposition to the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza. But if that were true then surely Nina’s father would have said so in his explanatory statement, rather than babble some nonsense even he knows no one will believe.

So yes, dear reader, I understand your disgust with these newspapers. The self-described “newly rebranded” Minnesota Star Tribune, formerly the Minneapolis Star Tribune, announced last month that it was ending all editorial endorsements, or rather endorsing “voters, not candidates,” its timing similarly suspect. A lot of liberals are raging these days against the New York Times for “sanewashing” Trump or for other perceived imperfections in its election coverage, and they’re cancelling Times subscriptions, too, even though the Times endorsed Kamala Harris last month, calling her “The Only Patriotic Choice for President.”

But cancelling your subscription to any of these newspapers is self-defeating. There are at most half a dozen newspapers left (the Post is one) that can reliably deliver fact-based national and international news, the gathering of which is very expensive. And metropolitan dailies like the Star Tribune need your support even more as more localities become news deserts. There was a time when subscribing to one or more newspapers was perhaps a consumer choice. It is now a civic responsibility, because we see more and more that when the public lacks accurate information about what its government is doing at all levels, democracy declines. As the Post’s slogan says, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Democracy isn’t working especially well right now, and a more appropriate slogan this weekend for the Post would probably be “When the chips are down, don’t count on us.” But I promise you: It can always get worse. Further weakening the Washington Post, or New York Times, or Los Angeles Times, or Minnesota Star Tribune won’t give you what you want. It will give Donald Trump what he wants.

So how do you register protest against these infuriating acts of cowardice? You can cancel your Amazon Prime membership if you like, or root against the Lakers, in which Soon-Shiong owns a minority stake. These options admittedly aren’t great. A friend of mine who works at the Los Angeles Times says he’s especially driven up the wall by people who announce they’re cancelling their subscription on X, a platform being used by its owner, Elon Musk, to help elect Trump. The only media boycott I favor these days is of X. I cancelled my account a couple of years ago because I couldn’t stomach its owner’s vulgar partisanship, union-busting, anti-Semitism, and various other repellent activities and opinions. If you want to make a moral statement, quit X. I don’t think any person or organization that professes liberal beliefs or even just basic decency can justify still remaining there.

Mostly what you can do is help elect Kamala Harris. Knock on doors, vote, get the word out any way you can, because this is an emergency. And if you want to be useful to Harris, remain informed. You won’t persuade anybody with bluster, because the folks who prefer bluster are already in Trump’s camp. Your best tools are hard information and sweet reason. I’ve tried my best to furnish these here, and especially in my writings this year for The New Republic, but you’re going to need the Post and the Times and your local newspaper, too. This is truly the worst conceivable time to cut them loose.