"In the three years that I worked at the Post, I fielded mail from all manner of people. … What they often evinced was better than interest, better even than bibliophilia; it was the rare and precious capacity to be interested in what they didn’t already know interested them."

Bring back this approach to writer bios

I’ve reached an age where I buy as many sympathy cards as I do birthday cards.

👀

The morning so far

True story! Has there been a better year to talk about history & journalism? A year long project that begins this evening with @jamellebouie.net. Will I get to even half the questions I want to ask?! Unlikely! Hope you'll join us & share -- registration info to join the webinar ⬇️

Yay! Great hire.

this case is maybe the single best example of one of the most destructive tendencies of this court: the tendency to treat their job as a collegiate legal seminar where they operate in hypotheticals rather than deal with the real world as it exists

Pencil aficionados, talk to me about sharpeners. My old workhorse of an electric sharpener is dying and I need to replace it soon. I haven’t found manual sharpeners as satisfying as electric ones, FWTW. ✏️📚

Bezos has killed the Washington Post's books pages. John Williams is a mensch, and a good and loyal friend, to me, to @backlisted.bsky.social and to anyone who loves literature and reading. Now more than ever, you know where not to buy your books, or anything else for that matter.

In case anyone forgot or didn't understand the reference www.wgbh.org/news/2017-10...

Bad Bunny “together we are America”

Just spitballing here, but maybe we should celebrate all this beautiful stuff and have a better country?

Mad props to Bad Bunny for an awesome halftime show, down to the infrastructure refs (power poles? You bet).

Perfect, no notes: the OpenAI Super Bowl ad costing millions is AI slop. 👇🏻

I’m watching a lot of petty, mean-spirited haters dunking on Kid Rock on every platform and seriously you all rock.

I'm super stoked for Bad Bunny to stunt on the G Hoe Pee, but are we pretending Kendrick didn't happen last year?

@postbaron.bsky.social reacts to Washington Post CEO Will Lewis stepping down days after laying off more than 300 journalists. “The best news I’ve heard all week.… It was time for him to go quite a long while ago.”

“I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/t...

This is very true — any journalist can confirm that the most important stories often aren't the ones that get the most clicks — but it also bears endless repeating that Bezos isn't even succeeding by his own journalistically bankrupt metric! The Post has hemorrhaged readers because of his decisions!

This just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how to do news. Data helps, but data doesn’t tell a reporter to spend a years-long investigation into child labor or an editor to place staff in a country on the brink of war. What exactly does Bezos think WaPo’s “journalistic mission” is?

"The demise of Book World is a tragic blow to writers, readers, and the publishing industry": Join former BW editors and contributors at @politicsprose.bsky.social on Feb. 21 at 5 p.m. to celebrate decades of great books coverage in the WaPo. politics-prose.com/tribute-book... #BookSky 📚

A small landlord is a person who rents out their basement apartment in their house. A person who owns a building is just a landlord-landlord.

I love this so much.

Ooh, just saw “without Asimov there would be no science fiction,” and no, you stale crouton, you waterlogged saltine, without Mary Shelley—harassed by her husband and Lord Byron—there would be no science fiction. You’re confusing fandom for canon.

ICYMI "C.I.A. World Factbook Ends Publication After 6 Decades--+The Factbook, a version of which dates to 1962, provided facts, figures, maps and more to generations of economists, professors, journalists and others" www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/u...

Always happy to share this historical hottie.

Breaking, from me: An executive order from Oklahoma's governor directs most of the state's public colleges to "phase out tenure." #AcademicSky #HigherEd @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/tenu...

Along with the And You’re Surprised? Committee, the All Political Actors Are Alike Committee, and the Stop Pointing Out What’s Illegal Committee.

I really wish the Bluesky Nothing Matters Committee would keep its opinions to itself.

THUS PASSES ANOTHER AGE OF THE EARTH www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

I'm looking at the homepage of the WaPo. No mention of axing 30 percent of the staff yesterday? Really? www.washingtonpost.com

Here's who the Washington Post just laid off.

The Post layoffs are an incalculable loss for local journalism, and one that we won't recover from anytime soon. But as billionaires destroy beloved institutions, it’s our job to build new ones. The @51st.news can't fill this void alone, but I think we owe it to DC to try. 51st.news/dc-bezos-was...

Besides the splendid @roncharles.bsky.social and @johnwilliams.bsky.social and Becca Rothfeld, I'm thinking about former editors Nina King and Marie Arana and Jabari Asim and Michael Dirda. Book World has long had a unique and often surprising voice. What a terrible loss.

It is worth noting the Post slashed the bulk of its arts coverage, including most of the critics, ending a great tradition in journalism.

This also speaks to my argument re: rich guys and newspapers: they think their business side hires are smart and they're just hobbled by the actual journalists, who are idiots.

If you are able, The Post's union has started a layoff fund for those fired by the world's fourth-richest man today. gofund.me/a310d0286

funny how the man who cost the Washington Post hundreds of thousands in subscriptions by canceling the paper's presidential endorsement—almost certainly the most destructive decision in the history of the paper, if not journalism itself—still has his job

I don't know what it is about idiots who buy newspapers without understanding why they exist or what their business is, but I think gutting books coverage is some kind of canary in the coalmine. These jackasses don't read books, so they assume no one else does either.

Books MATTER. Book coverage MATTERS. #Booksky

Absolutely not trying to make the terrible news of the closure of Washington Post's Books coverage about me or anything, but I cannot stress how bad this is for books. The biggest divide between Big 5 and independent/nonprofit press books is not quality--it's the marketing spend.

Here's Baron's full statement.

The Post has killed its book coverage, along with many other good things. Now would be a great time to subscribe to @roncharles.bsky.social's newsletter if you haven't already. substack.com/@roncharles/... #BookSky 📚

If you ever want to feel like you live in “the ruins of a once great civilization,” then read a local daily paper from the middle of last century — our predecessors had more and better knowledge of their neighbors, their societies, and their local democracies than we do about our own.

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

A manager for the Immigrant Defense Network told MPR News that back in November, 2,500 people were trained as constitutional observers. Now, the total is nearly 30,000 trained observers in 77 of Minnesota's 87 counties.

Philip Kennicott is spot on as usual: "A two-year closure suggests either that Trump doesn’t know how to sustain a viable performing arts center—which requires regular engagement, assembly and communion with its patrons, donors and artists—or he has plans to remake it into something unrecognizable."

I feel like Neil Gaiman is the last person we should be hearing from right now.

Mark's right—this is a good read. And will remind anyone who worked in publishing in 80s and 90s, especially in a junior/early career role, of what conditions were like.