So the Washington Post won’t be making a presidential endorsement this year, saying the paper is returning to its long-ago tradition of not endorsing candidates. No one is buying it. Dan Kennedy says, correctly, that it’s pretty obvious billionaire owner Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to antagonize Donald Trump, a move aptly described as “anticipatory obedience” should Trump win in November. Even one of the Post’s own columnists, Ruth Marcus, is complaining about the Post’s non-endorsement.

Besides the political weenie-ness of the non-endorsement, I see the move as part of a post-Marty Baron strategy to transform the Post into an Anywhere USA paper, producing more milquetoast feature stories and treating them as “products that could serve users,” i.e. it’s slowly becoming more of an Amazon Prime Post, as I described it back in June. … After hearing of the Post’s non-endorsement policy, a friend and former journalism colleague wrote in an email to me: “Bezos is killing the paper. …he’s doing his best to water down the paper and make it a glorified USA Today.”

Updates – 10.26.24 — More reactions on the non-endorsements:

From the Globe: “Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron slams newspaper for not making presidential endorsement.”

From Brian McGrory at the Globe: “Washington Post’s pathetic lack of endorsement shows Bezos willing to bow to Trump.”

From Jill Abramson at the Globe: “Democracy dies in broad daylight, thanks to Jeff Bezos.”

And from Harvard’s Nancy Gibbs at the NYT: “Two Billionaires, Two Newspapers, Two Acts of Self-Sabotage.”