Union protest

The New York Times sports section finally, officially shuttered, making way for my old employers, the Athletic, to operate under the NYT aegis. That all makes sense because the New York Times bought the Athletic specifically to fill its sports void. If you read the (surprisingly) vast amount of media eulogies to the New York Times sports section, though, you’d hardly get a sense that there was any void to fill. Instead, what happened is depicted as a lamentable tragedy, possibly born out of small-minded corporate callousness. It’s the result of the NYT looking to undermine its unionized “guild” writers. The New York Times sports section, like so many defunct media properties, was superb, flawless even. Except, that’s not entirely what’s going on.

Cockburn’s soul surged with admiration earlier as he witnessed the brave employees of the Washington Post do something truly heroic. Risk life and limb to report from the front lines? Well, no. Attend a White House press briefing and grill Karine Jean-Pierre? Nay, something far more daring still: more than 450 members of the Washington Post Guild, the publication’s union — brace yourself — stepped away from work on their lunch break to demand “Washington Post management gets serious about management and bring [them] a wage proposal.” It looked to be a beautiful sunny day outside the Post offices in Franklin Square, where employees mingled in t-shirts and helped themselves to — are those boxes of pizza?! — and what appears to be a variety of flavored bubbly water.