Washington Post’s lack of timely coverage over Georgetown coach Ed Cooley incident doesn’t bode well

The Washington Post has long been considered one of the cornerstones of not just American journalism but also sports coverage.

Some wondered if that era was ending earlier this year when owner Jeff Bezos started clearing house with a buyout program targeting veteran staffers, all the while sucking up to President Donald Trump and realigning the newspaper’s vision to defend libertarian viewpoints.

Longtime WaPo stalwarts like Sally Jenkins, Dan Steinberg, and Steven Goff left the company. The new Editorial Board embarrassed itself with an editorial about the start of the NFL season, signaling a severe drop in standards. Meanwhile, the company has replaced some human-created content with AI-generated content, resulting in disastrous outcomes.

There are still good reporters, and good work is being done at The Post. However, its reputation has suffered as expectations for its place in the modern media landscape have declined.

The latest example came this weekend in how D.C.’s paper of record covered Georgetown Hoyas men’s basketball coach Ed Cooley’s outburst in which he threw a water bottle at a child.

As the buzzer sounded on Georgetown’s 80-77 home loss against Xavier on Saturday, Cooley grabbed a water bottle and flung it toward the crowd at high velocity. The bottle hit a small child sitting in the stands.

Xavier escapes Georgetown on the road 😮‍💨 pic.twitter.com/JObs6f4H0E

— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) December 21, 2025

Afterward, Cooley apologized at his postgame press conference.

You would imagine that the head coach at the city’s most prominent college basketball program throwing a projectile at a child following a home game would lead to immediate coverage by any hometown paper, let alone The Washington Post. However, the only article to appear on the paper’s website after the game was an Associated Press write-up that made no mention of Cooley or what had transpired. The article was “created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar,” per a note at the bottom.

Georgetown coach Ed Cooley threw a water bottle in the stands and hit a kid. He apologized in a news conference that was also marked by raging at his team and himself. This was a home game. And this is the extent of the ⁦⁦@WashPost⁩ coverage pic.twitter.com/TlqADumsIE

— Andy Pollin (@andypollin1) December 21, 2025

The first official WaPo write-up of Cooley’s actions, which occurred a little before 11:00 p.m. EST on Saturday, December 20, didn’t publish until Sunday, December 21, at 3:44 p.m. EST. That too was an Associated Press write-up, though this one had an actual human byline (Howard Fendrich). That article came after Georgetown had suspended Cooley for one game and included statements from the school and the Big East Conference.

It wasn’t until about half an hour later that an article with a Washington Post byline (Gene Wang) was finally published. However, it included all of the same information and statements as the AP article. It also included an embedded X post that encouraged readers to sign up for the Post Sports newsletter, but was essentially unrelated to the Cooley story.

No article or video about the Georgetown game, Cooley’s water bottle toss, or the subsequent suspension was shared on the Washington Post or Post Sports X feed until 5:54 p.m. EST. The only information related to the incident or fallout was a reshare of Wang’s X post, which had gone up at 3:15 p.m. EST.

This kind of situation is something we’ve gotten used to writing about regional and niche publications for a while now. We’ve watched as newspapers and online outlets have gutted their sports departments, stopped sending reporters to cover games, replaced human writing with AI slop, and generally devalued all the things that once made them essential.

But there’s something different about seeing it happen to The Washington Post. The winner of  76 Pulitzer Prizes. The newspaper that printed the Pentagon Papers and broke the Watergate story. The sportswriting home of Shirley Povich, George Solomon, Thomas Boswell, Jane Leavy, Sally Jenkins, John Feinstein, Tony Kornheiser, and Michael Wilbon.

Watching the Post botch coverage of such an obvious and essential story in their own backyard does not portend well for the company’s or journalism’s next era.