For those of us who are wondering how The Washington Post’s new publisher, William Lewis, plans to revive Jeff Bezos’ sagging paper, he provided a few hints over the weekend at Davos. He talked about doing more to surface Post journalism that tends to be buried under the paper’s investigative reporting and voluminous coverage of politics. Specific areas he identified are “climate, well-being and sports,” according to Semafor (scroll down to “The Post’s Smorgasbord.”)
Climate makes sense because the Post has made it a real priority, and it may be one of the few areas in which the paper can distinguish itself from The New York Times, although the Times’ climate coverage is excellent as well. Well-being? Does Lewis really want to compete with the Times’ Well section? As for sports, maybe Lewis sees an opportunity given that the Times has offloaded its sports coverage to its subsidiary The Athletic and that Sports Illustrated may be on the verge of going under. Here’s a thought: Why not acquire SI and run it as a Post vertical?
Lewis also talked about dynamic pricing for subscriptions. I have no idea what that means except that it generally refers to charging some people more than others.
The overall strategy, as Semafor describes it, is to “focus on improving the packaging of the Washington Post’s existing journalism, rather than expensive new initiatives.” No surprise — the money-losing paper is unlikely to go on a hiring spree right after cutting 240 jobs. And it still has one of the largest newsrooms in the country.
The New York Times has published a story (free link) that calls into question the rise of billionaires who own news organizations, noting that The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos, the Los Angeles Times under Patrick Soon-Shiong and Time magazine under Marc Benioff are all losing money. True enough. My problem with the story is that reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson try too hard to impose an ubertake when in fact there’s important background with each of those examples. Mullin and Robertson write:
All three newsrooms greeted their new owners with cautious optimism that their business acumen and tech know-how would help figure out the perplexing question of how to make money as a digital publication.
But it increasingly appears that the billionaires are struggling just like nearly everyone else. Time, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all lost millions of dollars last year, people with knowledge of the companies’ finances have said, after considerable investment from their owners and intensive efforts to drum up new revenue streams.
The role of wealthy newspaper owners is something of ongoing interest to me. My last book, “The Return of the Moguls” (2018), focused on the Post, The Boston Globe and the Orange County Register in Southern California, owned by a rich Boston-area businessman named Aaron Kushner. At the time the book came out, the Post was flying high, the Globe was muddling along and the Register was failing; it eventually fell into the hands of the slash-and-burn hedge fund Alden Globe Capital. The Post’s and the Globe’s fortunes have since moved in opposite directions.
Here are the particulars that get glossed over in Mullin and Robertson’s attempt to impose an overarching framework:
• Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013, made deep investments in technology and built up the staff. The result was years of growth and profits, which only came sputtering to a halt after Donald Trump left the White House. Former executive editor Marty Baron, in his book “Collision of Power,” suggests that, over time, a disciplined approach to hiring became more lax. In other words, the Post got ahead of itself and is now in the midst of a reset. A new publisher, William Lewis, begins work this month, and we’ll see if he can articulate a strategy that amounts to more than “just like the Times only not as comprehensive.”
• Benioff bought a dog and, predictably, it’s going “woof woof.” Time was the largest of the Big Three newsweeklies, along with Newsweek and U.S. World & News Report; it’s also the only one of the three that still exists in a somewhat recognizable form. Newsweeklies succeeded because, pre-internet, you couldn’t get great national papers like the Times, the Post and The Wall Street Journal delivered to your doorstep. Not only is there no discernible reason for them to exist anymore, but the leading newsweekly these days, at least in terms of cachet, is The Economist.
• Not all billionaire owners are in it for the right reasons, and Soon-Shiong has proven to be an uncertain leader. Does he care about the Los Angeles Times or not? He’s built it up; now he’s tearing it down. He recently pushed out his executive editor, Kevin Merida, the most prominent Black editor in the country, and he’s done some truly awful things such as delivering Tribune Publishing’s papers to Alden Global Capital and more recently selling The San Diego Union-Tribune to Alden.
So what does that tell us about billionaire owners? Not much. As Mullin and Robertson acknowledge, some are doing just fine, including The Boston Globe under John and Linda Henry and The Atlantic under Laurene Powell Jobs. They could have also mentioned the Star Tribune of Minneapolis under Glen Taylor or, for that matter, The New York Times, a publicly traded company that is nevertheless under the tight control of the Sulzberger family. I don’t think the Sulzbergers are billionaires, but they are not poor.
At the moment, it seems that the only two viable models for large regional dailies is individual ownership by wealthy people who are willing to invest in future profitability and nonprofit ownership, either in the form of a nonprofit organization owning a for-profit paper, as with The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times, or a paper that goes fully nonprofit, as with The Salt Lake Tribune and The Baltimore Banner. The Banner is a digital startup that nevertheless is attempting to position itself as a comprehensive replacement for The Baltimore Sun. The Sun, in turn, was one of the Tribune papers that Soon-Shiong helped gift-wrap for Alden, and just this past week was sold to right-wing television executive David Smith.
Retired Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron writes about an unusual idea in his recent book, “Collision of Power.” Baron thinks that the time has come for news organizations to turn the tables on their tormenters and sue them for libel. Think of it like Dominion Voting System’s lawsuit against Fox News, which brought a $787.5 million settlement, except that the plaintiff would be a media outlet rather than a voting-machine company.
In his book, Baron observes that Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have both suggested that the law should be changed to make it easier for public officials and public figures to bring (and win) libel suits. He writes:
Legacy media have always vigorously defended against libel suits. Rarely have they brought defamation lawsuits of their own. What good could come of pursuing the sort of litigation we deplored? However, those who smear us find comfort in the expectation that, while we might complain, we’re unlikely to sue. We have rendered ourselves sitting ducks for slander.
I don’t want mainstream journalists to behave like warriors in the practice of their craft, but neither do I want us to suffer attacks on our character without fighting back. Winning in the court of public opinion may require, at times, going to court. If DeSantis, and copycat governors, make it easier for defamation plaintiffs to prevail, perhaps we should make some of those victories our own.
The reason I’m bringing this up now is that Baron expanded on the idea in a recent appearance on “Double Take,” a podcast produced by Newton Investment Management. Baron was interviewed by two Newton analysts, Rafe Lewis (formerly of The Boston Globe) and Jack Encarnacao (formerly of the Boston Herald). It’s a sharp interview, and well worth a listen.
As befits a podcast hosted by a financial firm, much of the conversation covered the revival of The Washington Post as a business under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. Unfortunately, the Post has gone backwards since Baron departed, and neither Lewis nor Encarnacao asked him about it. No doubt if they had, Baron would have simply said he’s not there anymore. But the Post lost a reported $100 million in 2023 and is shedding staff with the same alacrity that it was adding bodies a few years ago.
A new publisher, William Lewis, began work this month. In “Collision of Power,” Baron offers a mixed assessment of Lewis’ predecessor, Fred Ryan. Perhaps Lewis, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones, will come up with a strategy for Post to thrive in the post-Trump era — that is, if we’ve even entered the post-Trump era.
The Baltimore Sun’s convoluted ownership journey took an unexpected turn on Monday. The notorious hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which acquired the paper as part of its purchase of Tribune Publishing in 2021, sold the Sun to David Smith, who’s executive chairman of the television network Sinclair. The price has not been disclosed.
Smith is a Baltimore guy, and he’s buying the Sun as an individual — that is, the Sun will not be part of Sinclair. In that respect, the deal is similar to Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post in 2013. The Post is not part of Amazon, although the mega-retailer was enlisted to sell discount descriptions to the Post, especially during the early years of Bezos’ ownership.
We are in the early hours of the Sun deal, so we don’t know how this is going to play out. It’s striking how much fear and criticism I’ve seen given Alden’s reputation as the worst newspaper owner on the planet, infamous for slashing newsrooms, selling off real estate and making journalists work out of their homes. Normally a transfer to independent ownership would be celebrated, and, in fact, Smith might provide an infusion of cash and energy. Then again, he might also bring his toxic brand of right-wing politics to the Sun.
The Sun is the flagship of a regional group that also includes the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, the site of a horrific mass shooting some years ago.
This didn’t have to happen. Back when Tribune was for sale, Baltimore hotel magnate Stewart Bainum reached an agreement to buy the Sun from Alden once Alden had acquired Tribune. Bainum, though, came to believe that Alden was not adhering to that agreement, and he wound up bidding for all of Tribune’s nine major-market newspapers.
Although Bainum was offering more money than Alden ($680 million versus $635 million), word at the time was that Alden’s bid was more straightforward, and the vulture capitalists won the prize. Among other things, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times and then a member of Tribune’s board, declined to stop the sale to Alden, for which he was roundly criticized.
Bainum, meanwhile, used some of his wealth to found The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit digital venture that immediately established a reputation for journalistic excellence. It will be fascinating to see whether Smith rebuilds the Sun into a worthy competitor to the Banner, or if instead he uses it to grind his political axe.
Matthew Yglesias has some thoughts about the state of the media business and why there were so many layoffs in 2023 at high-profile news organizations like BuzzFeed (which closed its news division), NPR and Vox Media. There is very little new in his observations, but I was interested to see that he’s complaining about The Washington Post’s local coverage under Jeff Bezos. Yglesias writes:
What has bothered me, personally, about Bezos’ stewardship of the Post is that through the process of first growing and then shrinking the newsroom, he’s left coverage of local issues worse off than it was before. His aspiration upon taking over was to make the Post a “national and even global publication,” and during the growth years, his investment priorities reflected that. Perry Stein used to cover DC Public Schools, and I think DC residents with school-aged children really appreciated her work. But when she got a promotion, it wasn’t to do something bigger covering DC government or regional issues, it was to cover the Justice Department, where she’s churning out Trump trial stories.
When I was reporting on the Post for my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls,” the paper was in the midst of an enormous growth curve, briefly shooting ahead of The New York Times in digital traffic and consistently earning profits. Bezos’ vision of reinventing the Post as a national digital publication — leaving behind the Graham family’s “Of Washington, For Washington” marketing pitch — was a huge success. But the paper has not done well since Trump left the presidency, and is now losing money and circulation.
As Yglesias writes, and as I’ve written on several occasions, the Post’s current position as being pretty much like the Times only not as comprehensive just isn’t tenable in the long run. One thing it could do is reposition itself as being “of Washington, for Washington” while at the same time maintaining its commitment to national and international news. During the early Bezos years, the Post actually offered two digital editions. One included all of the Post’s journalism; the other was a cheaper, more colorful product that omitted local news and that was aimed at the national market. Clearly there were people at the Post back then who knew they could charge a premium for local. Why not embrace that again?
The union representing Washington Post employees has asked that no one engage with Post content during a 24-hour strike that began today at midnight. “On Dec. 7, we ask you to respect our walkout by not crossing the picket line: For 24 hours, please do not engage with any Washington Post content,” the Washington Post Guild said in a statement. “That includes our print and online news stories, podcasts, videos, games and recipes.”
The Post, which soared during the Trump presidency, is now losing money and shedding jobs. Management, currently in the midst of eliminating 240 jobs, has threatened layoffs if not enough staff members accept voluntary buyouts. Oliver Darcy of CNN has the full story.
Just as I would not cross a physical picket line, so will I not check in with the Post today. I urge you to (not) do the same.
The Washington Post has named a new publisher to replace Fred Ryan, who left earlier this year amid widening losses, falling circulation and a reported rift with executive editor Sally Buzbee. Ryan will be succeeded by Will Lewis, and there are some flashing lights we ought to pay attention to.
For one thing, Lewis was knighted by King Charles III on the recommendation of Boris Johnson. For another, he is a former top lieutenant to Rupert Murdoch, although he denies that he and Murdoch are close. Weirdly, a Post profile of Lewis says that “Lewis disagrees with media descriptions of him as a former ‘Murdoch lieutenant,’” but it’s a simple fact. It doesn’t mean that he still speaks to Murdoch or that he doesn’t have his own set of values.
Lewis is the founder, CEO and publisher of a project called The News Movement, which the Post describes as “a social-first media business providing nonpartisan news to Gen Z.” The homepage offers BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but Lewis also has a background in serious journalism.
In other words, there are warning signs, but Lewis may turn out to be an inspired choice. That said, Post owner Jeff Bezos’ hiring record is mixed. Ryan always struck me as not quite right for the job, something confirmed by former executive editor Marty Baron in his book “Collision of Power.” Among Ryan’s last acts was presiding over the death of the Post’s gaming vertical, one of the few features the paper offered that appealed to a younger readership.
Bezos’ pick for editorial page editor, David Shipley, has not improved the Post’s opinion section, which, with few exceptions, has been dismal for many years. The jury is still out on Buzbee. She was well-regarded in her previous job as executive editor of The Associated Press. Her performance at the Post strikes me as solid, but I’m not sure what her vision is. Perhaps her tense relationship with Ryan held her back.
Final fun fact: The New York Times beat the Post in breaking the news about Lewis’ hiring. Yes, I know it can be difficult to report on your own institution, but good grief.
For more than eight years, The Washington Post experienced a second golden age. From late 2013, when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the storied paper for $250 million, through the early months of 2021, when Donald Trump left the White House and a new administration began to settle in, the Post was firing on all cylinders. Thanks to Bezos’ strategic investments in technology and an expanded news report, the Post emerged as a real competitor to The New York Times for the first time since the 1970s.
That second golden age also overlapped with Martin Baron’s time as executive editor of the Post. In his new book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post,” Baron tells the story of those years, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the end of the legendary Graham era; how Bezos quickly transformed a shrinking, mostly regional newspaper into a national digital media outlet; and the challenge of covering Trump, whom Baron frankly, and repeatedly, calls an “authoritarian.”
Two consecutive headlines in Nieman Lab’s daily newsletter Tuesday drove home the growing gap between The New York Times and The Washington Post. The first: “The Washington Post is reducing its workforce by 240 positions.” The second: “The New York Times opinion section has tripled its size since 2017.”
I’ve written about this before, including a suggestion I made last year that the Post should reconnect with local news. As someone who covered the early years of the Post’s revival under Jeff Bezos, I find the current situation sad. Both the Post and the Times flourished during the Trump presidency, but the Times has continued to soar in the post-Trump years (yes, I know we’re not really in the post-Trump years) while the Post has sputtered, losing money and circulation.
We need two great general-interest national newspapers. If the Post is going to get back in the race, it needs to find a way to differentiate itself from the Times. For a few years, the Post difference was a tougher, more truth-telling brand of political coverage, but these days both papers seem pretty much the same. I don’t blame Sally Buzbee, who succeeded the legendary Marty Baron as executive editor. The vision — and the resources — have to come from the very top.
Marty Baron, right, with then-Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen. Photo (cc) 2017 by the Knight Foundation.
I downloaded Martin Baron’s book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post,” on the first day that it became available. I expect it’s going to take me a while to read it, but I plan to review it once I’ve made my way through its 576 pages. The Post under Bezos and Baron comprise the longest section of my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls,” although — since it ends with Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory — I did not cover how the Post navigated the Trump presidency.
Based on what others are writing, and on interviews that Baron is giving during the early days of his book tour, it sounds like journalistic objectivity is a major theme of “Collision of Power.” Baron has written and talked about this before, as he did in an address this past spring at Brandeis University. And what his critics don’t give him enough credit for is that he subscribes to the proper view of objectivity defined by Walter Lippmann more than a century ago.
In Baron’s view, like Lippmann’s, objectivity is the fair-minded pursuit of the truth, not both-sides-ism, not quoting a variety of views and leaving it up to the poor reader or viewer or listener to figure it out. For instance, here’s Baron’s answer when he was asked by CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy about how good a job the press is doing in its coverage of the Republican Party’s meltdown into lunacy and authoritarianism:
I think the coverage of the latest chaos has been very good, based on what I’ve read. It portrays the Republican Party as Chaos Central, which it is. The party is proving to be ungovernable, and that is wreaking havoc on the country as a whole. The bigger issue is Trump. I’d like to see substantially more coverage of what a second Trump administration would do upon taking office. Who would be put in cabinet posts? Who would be put in charge of regulatory agencies?
No doubt Trump would embark on an immediate campaign of vengeance. Plans are already in the works. What would that mean for the FBI, DOJ, the courts, the press — really for all the institutional pillars of our democracy? Some stories have been produced, though not enough in my view. Those sorts of stories would serve the public better than yet-another interview with Trump himself. Look, the party that now levels evidence-free charges of “weaponization” of government openly boasts of how it would weaponize government against its perceived enemies.
I don’t want to copy and paste all of Darcy’s interview, so I’ll leave it at that. But do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Baron touches on several other important topics, including Fox News, artificial intelligence and X/Twitter, and he’s got smart things to say about all of them.
Meanwhile, here’s a surprise: The Washington Post has published a long feature by former Post reporter Wesley Lowery on the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Massacre, 109-year-old Viola Fletcher. Lowery, who’s now based at American University, left the Post in 2020 after he and Baron clashed over Lowery’s provocative tweets. It never should have come to that; Lowery, a gifted journalist, was essential for his coverage of the first Black Lives Matter movement and helped the Post win a Pulitzer Prize for its data journalism project tracking police shootings of civilians. My media ethics students are reading Lowery’s new book, “American Whitelash,” this spring.
