All moral preening is downstream from profitability. No profits, no preening.

From “I Can’t Sugarcoat It Anymore”: Will Lewis Bluntly Defends Washington Post Shake-Up by Charlotte Klein.  The subheading is Addressing a rattled newsroom in the wake of Sally Buzbee’s resignation, the Post’s CEO and publisher stressed the need for taking “decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path.”

The legacy mainstream media is bleading readers and losing money at a furious rate.  Something all reporters complain about and lament.  But they seem to have no clue about how fundamental is growth and profitability to good outcomes.  Losses and shrinkage are extinction level conditions.  Which apparently just isn't clear to journalists.  Or at least those remaining at the Washington Post.  

The Washington Post has been losing readers and money for years now and has had a noisy and sometimes self-destructively Woke newsroom.  A new publisher was brought in to shake things up and apparently that led to the replacement of the editor in the past week.  The newsrooms reaction?

When Washington Post publisher Will Lewis and new interim executive editor Matt Murray met with staff Monday, the newsroom was still coming to terms with the abrupt exit of Sally Buzbee, who had led the paper since May 2021.

“Everyone was pretty shocked with your email last night,” one reporter said at the meeting, according to a source present. The reporter suggested that “the most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run the Post, and we now have four white men running three newsrooms,” and expressed surprise at this development given Lewis’s prior commitments to diversity.

[snip]

During the Monday meeting, Lewis said, “We need world-class journalism every single day, and the people that are coming in to help us do that will be a real benefit to the organization.” He said he “really enjoyed working with Sally” and “wish[ed] it could have gone on for longer, but it couldn’t.” As far as diversity goes, Lewis admitted “it’s not great” and vowed to do better going forward.

Later in the meeting, another reporter asked Lewis whether “any women or people of color were interviewed and seriously considered for either of these positions,” a question that prompted applause. Lewis said there will be “significant opportunities” within the new organizational structure. Asked by another staffer about which people he met with, Lewis said, “It was an iterative, messy process, which I don’t want to go into the details of.”

At one point Lewis was asked whether he was intentionally bringing in people who come from a different culture than the Post. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis said. “So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path, sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”

Either the journalists don't comprehend the magnitude of the financial catastrophe or don't care.  That they are more concerned about cosmetic issues around racial diversity than they about the fact that no one wants to buy their product is almost incomprehensible.

But that seems to be the case.