melina mara

LIVE: Pope Leo leads Passion of the Lord service x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

My @TheWrap look at the talent scramble post-WaPo cuts, with Atlantic, NOTUS, others in the fray “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists,” says the Atlantic's Jeff Goldberg, “I’m more than happy to give them a home.” thewrap.com/media-platform…

The Washington Post has long done — and is still doing — great journalism. I don’t understand how laying off a bunch of talented and hardworking journalists solves what is fundamentally a publisher and business side problem. The Post deserves better.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz: "What's happening in Minnesota right now defies belief. News reports simply don't do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities. They're pulling over people indiscriminately, including US citizens, and demanding to see their papers. At grocery stores, at bus stops, even at our schools, they're breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans. Kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process. Let's be very, very clear. This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government. This week, he went online to promise that 'the day of retribution and reckoning is coming.' That's a direct threat against the people of this state who dared to vote against him three times and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace."

Mitch McConnell just said the quiet part out loud on Greenland: We already have everything we need. Greenland already cooperates. Our Arctic access already exists. What Trump is proposing isn’t strategy, it’s burning allied trust for nothing. “Incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal allies” is not strength. It’s self-sabotage.

This photo underscores the importance of eyewitness journalism and AP’s legacy of documenting the presidency. I look forward to the day I can once again cover President Trump alongside my colleagues. Now more than ever, independent, nonpartisan photojournalism is essential.

Here's Ruth's note to Jeff and Will:

@dsamuelsohn @USATODAY Fantastic! Congratulations Darren

Job update: I'm now the White House & Congress editor for @USATODAY

@JStein_WaPo @ddiamond Thank you Jeff for putting words to my experience for the last 20 years, and many of our experiences, at The Post

Great additional thoughts from @ddiamond dandiamond.substack.com/p/chasing-bern…

I know many of you will roll your eyes at this, but that's OK; I wouldn't be in this field if I was afraid of being dunked on every now and then. When I first came to The Washington Post in 2017, I was extremely wary it would be too establishment for me. Too corporate. Too deferential to power. What I have instead found over the last seven years is that the paper has consistently given me a unique, awesome platform to fulfill the highest calling of journalism -- to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.  The Post has spared no resource in allowing me to pursue this mission. It flew me to Puerto Rico to interview hurricane victims cut off from federal food stamp aid. To Maine to cover the long-term care crisis facing the nation's elderly. To Kentucky to document the closure of a steel plant. To Las Vegas to cover the housing crisis. To Wisconsin for farmers caught in the crosshairs of a trade war. To Detroit for a story on the nation's unraveling safety net. To the Bronx to chronicle appalling public housing conditions. (OK, I took the train there.) To Ukraine to cover a war. To Indonesia for meetings of the world's most powerful financial leaders.  Since the beginning of the year, the Post has devoted thousands of manpower hours to a series -- six parts published thus far -- on the unintended consequences of U.S. sanctions. This effort included paying me and a team to travel to northeast Guatemala to chronicle an economic calamity almost 2,000 miles away from my desk, in one of the poorest parts of the world. At least 20 people have worked on this series alone. The Post did not greenlight this series because it thought there would be huge pageviews in U.S. sanctions policy; it did so because it's important for the public to understand how the surging use of the tool is affecting the world and the nation's foreign policy. It did so because the story matters. I fully understand the misgivings people have expressed about billionaire control over our journalism. (I published a story today -- pitched by an editor, put by editors on today's front page -- about billionaires threatened by Trump who are now hedging their bets.) But these are stories that require more than just substantial resources; they require a devotion to journalism that seeks to document how machinations in Washington affect the lives outside it. I could try a Substack where I spout off whatever happens to be in my head that day. I could work for a publication that only caters to lobbyists and elite insiders. But there are precious few publications still doing the coverage -- however incomplete; however still in need of improvement -- aimed at serving the broader public at large. I believe The Washington Post is one of them. I am not here to tell anyone what to do. We are imperfect. My work can suffer from negativity bias, recency bias, imperfect data, faulty assumptions, motivated sources. I get things wrong. My journalism can be flawed and you should yell at me on twitter when it is. I want to be more transparent about the decisions I make and the stories I publish. But I promise you: I and many, many other journalists throughout this newsroom would quit The Washington Post if we ever felt our work was not in service of the public at large. That is the point of the job. That is why I hope we get to do it for as long as possible.

On political endorsement wapo.st/3YmeD3T This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.

We were just violently thrown forward, as our van slammed into the one in front of us and was hit from behind.

Several cars in the Walz motorcade crashed just before 1 p.m. A staff member in our press van appeared to have a sprained or broken arm and is being treated by medics. Everyone else is shaken but appears to be in okay condition.

A blast-stressed elephant and an abandoned lemur: The war within Kyiv’s zoo washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/…

Here's a link to the full package awarded the @PulitzerPrizes today in explanatory journalism, which I shared with an extraordinary cast of colleagues. Thank you to the @washingtonpost - a place that still has the ambition to do the hard stuff. washingtonpost.com/pr/2020/05/04/…

Millions of Americans don’t have clean running water. In the age of the coronavirus, that puts the entire population at risk. Via @FrancesSSellers with magnificent photography from @melinamara washingtonpost.com/national/ameri…

Wet California winter is a boon for skiers and water supply. But it brings a threat: wildfires. wapo.st/2WOPmST?tid=ss…

One million species face extinction, U.N. panel says. And humans will suffer as a result. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

‘Absolutely out of control’: Cliff Sims’s book depicts life in Trump’s White House - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/politics/absol…