The aligning of a great paper’s editorial page with any administration is wrong and I am lodging my little protest.

         I MADE A meaningless protest last night. By that I mean “meaningless” to the object of it, but I felt better.

            I cancelled my Amazon account – every bit of it. Kindle, PrimeTV, the whole ball of wax. I also cancelled my Washington Post subscription.

            Why? Because I’m a journalist and Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of both Amazon and WAPO, announced that going forward the paper’s editorial page would support the Trump Administration. He didn’t outright say that, but it’s not hard to figure out.

            A point: The current administration is NOT the point. I would feel the same if the paper signed on to tout the positions and goals of any administration. That is not the paper’s job.

            Here is his statement. It leaves little doubt that going forward one of the nation’s greatest papers no longer will be great, at least in terms of its editorial page. It no longer will be a marketplace of ideas and opinions:

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

            No, the internet does not do that job. The editorials section of newspapers long has been called “op-ed” specifically because it usually contained opinions and writings that disagreed with the owner and/or editorial board’s views. Bezos has called that approach “outdated.”

            So, I made my little protest. I have no illusions it will matter. Usually when you cancel an account the company tries to keep you, at least asks why you are leaving. Haven’t heard from Amazon yet and doubt I will.

            I suspect life will go on for me. I plan on going back to shopping local more, going out to stores, mingling with the other folks. I found a new reading app, Kobo Books, that appears to do everything Kindle did, plus it comes loaded with OverDrive which makes getting ebooks from my library simple.

            I suspect an added benefit, in addition to resocializing out in stores, will be that my impulse buying will go down markedly. I like it when a protest also might improve your life day to day!

                  Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].