vinistic 🛡

I don’t care if you love the Post or hate it, love Bezos or hate him. The carnage today is horrible for the people who lost their jobs , a devastating blow to a legendary organization and for journalism writ large. Anyone taking a scintilla of pleasure in it is just sick.

Still baffled: why would a disinterested, disengaged, distracted @washingtonpost owner hire a seemingly disinterested, disengaged, distracted CEO, suffer perpetual criticism and $ loss?  Lots of rich people would buy it, and even more execs would gladly run it.  Show me a single entity anywhere at anytime doing anything that worked without strong, engaged leadership. Kinda matters. I bet @dongrahamdc1 or Kara Swisher would pull together a group to take it over. Bloomberg could easily swoop it up himself. Just sell it.

As someone who watched Time-Inc management get rich, layoff tons of incredibly talented editorial people, before the eventual end: The executives who destroy the product always get away clean and always get away rich. You see this repeating itself now in real-time.

Every person in sports at The Washington Post would be wise to look elsewhere right now. That's just reality. Now here's the other reality: You still have to do your job at the highest level, your editors have to do their jobs at the highest level, and you as a writer/copy person/designer etc...want to work hard for them. And most importantly: You want to do your best work for readers. Just terrible conditions as far as one's mental health — and I'm sure everyone will still produce great copy. But that's what's happening.

The Post has been the gold standard in sports for decades. The sports and style sections have been its only differentiators for years. Everything else, including great reporting in other areas, can be found elsewhere. No reason for a Washingtonian to subscribe anymore.

My full take on the Darian Mensah situation now that it is resolved in ten honest bullet points. 1. We are entering a new system. Getting rid of kinks will take time. 2. If we had collective bargaining, these things wouldn't happen this way. 3. The lack of collective bargaining is mainly, but not exclusively, the #NCAA's fault. 4. A full litigation here could have gone either way. 5. Litigation is slow and would have been bad for all parties. 6. As such, settlement was the best solution. 7. That doesn't mean settlement was perfect; just that it was better than any of the alternatives. 8. If you know economics, Coase's Theorem played out. The resource (Mensah) landed in the place where most valued. That's proper free-market capitalism. 9. If you know law, you ask yourself why the parties didn't negotiate a liquidated damages clause. Perhaps they should have. 10. Let's hope this young man goes pro because, if not, all else equal, I would take the Duke degree over the Miami one. But, either way, that is the college athlete's choice, and not mine to make.

Fanatics making Super Bowl ad debut highlighting sports betting platform sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2026/…

There is nothing about The Washington Post that surprises me. I think Bezos and Will Lewis telegraphed it. But it is such a terrible thing in an age where information slop grows daily. That you would not try to find away to monetize sports, one of the few things that brings us together and offers plenty of ways to creatively monetize the product, is both unconscionable and terrible business.

The family dinner that was $100 5 years ago is now $150. Auto insurance that was $200 is now $350 Home insurance that was $300 is now $450 How does the Fed fix those? It can't. Wages will keep going up, but still not fast enough to mitigate price hikes. That's the challenge.

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I listened to the the Illinois Racing Board meeting. The most important information that came from that meeting is that salaries are being paid from Hawthorne's "frozen" accounts, but horsemen with over $1m in bounced checks and other moneys due them for months are not.

.@SouthwestAir Your new boarding process is a hot mess. Please bring back the old one.

Excited to announce I'm starting a new column at Bloomberg about the business of fashion. The first piece is about how to re-shore US apparel manufacturing. Instead of using mass deportations and tariffs, the government should move the industry upstream. 🧵

CLASS ACT: Miami star RB Mark Fletcher came out of the locker room to find Fernando Mendoza after the game and congratulate him. Fletcher reportedly stood there for a while waiting to give the proper congratulations. Really great sportsmanship 👏❤️

Former MSU a player as well was 40 years old. Just brutal news.

Special moment as Tom Izzo told his team to go back out on the court and greet the MSU fans who came all the way to Washington for today’s game

A pick-me-up to send along to the suffering MSU football fan in your life.

Just published and written by me... casinoreports.com/schuetz-sharps…

I've reached the station in life where people (correctly) assume I like my coffee black. It's a good place to be.

MSU’s game at Washington will be at 6 p.m. ET, the best of two not great options (the other was 10:30 p.m. ET), with the Seahawks-49ers playoff game in Seattle kicking off at 8 p.m. ET. Game is on BTN.