Marvin Gaye discussed what was goin' on!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2023

The online Post doesn't seem to care: It's been a while since we chronicled the difference between the hard-copy Washington Post and its pitiful online edition.

The hard-copy Washington Post is still an actual newspaper. Online, the story is different. Consider this morning, for instance:

The print edition of the Post seems to be crafted for adults. Six reports appear on the paper's front page. Each report concerns an obvious "hard news" topic.

Above the fold, the headlines on the three reports look like this:

Justices pivotal to 2024 election
MULTIPLE CASES INVOLVE HIGH COURT
Trump's eligibility for office, immunity at stake

12 states could see abortion on ballot
Measures are being put forward to codify right or ban in constitutions

A historic surge of migrants, and few solutions in sight

Those were the topics appearing above the fold. Below the fold, three more reports concerned serious hard news topics, including the war in Ukraine. 

The online Post was a whole different critter. When we clicked there at 8 a.m., these were the four featured articles—the four articles which topped the paper's website and featured full banner headlines:

Colon cancer is rising in young Americans. It’s not clear why.

The lives upended by Florida’s school book wars

U.N. Security Council tries to avoid U.S. veto on resolution to stop fighting

How fake sugars sneak into foods and disrupt metabolic health

There's nothing "wrong" with any of those reports. The third report actually deals with the war in Gaza.

(Yes, it's still going on.)

That said, in the immediate aftermath of the Colorado court decision, there was nothing about that major political topic. The report about "Florida's school book wars" involves a handful of "upended lives." In our assessment, this was simply the Washington Post pushing a hobbyhorse topic which has largely gotten stale.

By the time we reached the fourth of those topics, it was clear that we were mainly dealing with "human interest" / personal health reporting. At that point, the website transitioned to a section called the Daily Mix. 

The Daily Mix offered four more reports. These reports did not receive banner headlines. The new, smaller headlines said this:

Winter solstice, shortest day of the year, arrives this evening

He quietly built a $13 million fortune. In death, he gave it all away.

A runaway steer escaped Newark Penn Station and changed his destiny

Here's how to harvest rainwater—and why you might want to

By now, we were being invited to click on the destiny of a runaway steer, or possibly on the best way to use rainwater. Also, someone had saved $13 million, then had given it all away!

Immigration, abortion, election issues, Ukraine? Such topics remained unmentioned.

We'll admit it—we found this digest of topics insulting. As always at the online Post, you could find world and national news if you were prepared to try. But such reports will often be found way, way down the Post's endless front page, buried under many reports about runaway steers and rainwater.

In our view, the online Post panders to bullroar and human interest in a way the print edition still doesn't. Almost surely, this is intended to allow the online Post to make sufficient money. This question popped in our heads this morning:

How much money does the world's richest man really need to have in his coffers?

Online, the Post is all about "human interest"—human interest and "first world problems." The print edition of the Post seems like a whole different newspaper.

We haven't mentioned this state of affairs for a while. But we thought what we encountered this morning was an insult to human intelligence.

As we perused those top eight reports, we thought of what Marvin Gaye once said:

"Talk to me / so you can see / what's goin' on." 

So the late Marvin Gaye bravely sang in one of his greatest hits.

With admirable self-confidence, Gaye did discuss what was going on in the America of that day. It seems to us that the online Post prefers to pander and clown.

As we close, a special bonus giveaway feature:

For news about that runaway steer, you can just click here.