The Washington Post Building at One Franklin Square Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew … More
I didn’t think I’d be back writing about the troubles at The Washington Post so soon, following my last piece from just a few days ago, but here we are.
That earlier piece, which you can read here, focused on the Post having lost tens of thousands of subscribers over the last several years, with the paper’s current average daily paid subscriptions now at a new low. Despite the financial backing of owner Jeff Bezos, the reality is that Post hasn’t been able to convert fleeting interest from readers into long-term loyalty; worse still, internal dysfunction and shifting editorial strategies continue to cloud the Post’s identity and future.
And, unfortunately, two new developments suggest the challenges aren’t letting up anytime soon.
Let’s start with a newsroom experiment that executive editor Matt Murray detailed in a company memo. It’s a new initiative that will allow individuals mentioned in the Post’s stories to annotate those articles directly on the site. The movie is being framed as a way to “deepen the conversation” and keep reader engagement on the Post’s platform, rather than that discussion migrating away to X, Reddit, or elsewhere. But, come on: It’s an absolute certainty that this is going to end up backfiring in spectacular fashion.
This initiative is the kind of idea that looks fantastic on a whiteboard: Start letting some of the sources who are quoted in articles add annotations to the articles they’re mentioned in. More engagement = everybody wins. Or something like that.
In reality, the idea of real-time rebuttals next to reported journalism opens up an unnecessary Pandora’s box. What happens when a powerful figure – or anyone, really – uses the feature in bad faith to undermine verified facts? Or tries to insert spin into the conversation? Will readers trust the original reporting, or will the very presence of a sidebar reply create the illusion of “two sides” to a matter of fact? Reporters will technically be able to respond, but as I see it this risks adding “debate monitor” to their job description.
That the paper’s management decided to embark on such an initiative at all, meanwhile, should also put this next bit of negative news into context.
Pamela Alma Weymouth, granddaughter of the late Post publisher Katharine Graham, has written a personal and extremely scathing commentary in The Nation about the situation at the Post — among other things, accusing Bezos of systematically dismantling the institution her grandmother once protected.
She lays the blame for much of the Post’s woes at the feet of the Amazon founder. “In the face of a more tyrannical Trump,” she writes, “Bezos has retreated. He’s muzzled his editorial page. Exceptional writers, editors, cartoonists have fled. Eight days before the election, the Post canceled a scheduled endorsement of Kamala Harris — breaking with decades of precedent. Four hundred Post journalists signed a protest letter. Two hundred and fifty thousand readers canceled their subscriptions.”
Things got worse earlier this year, she continued, when Bezos dictated that Opinion writers would be expected to align with “personal liberties and free markets,” leaving little or even no room for dissenting views. Editor David Shipley and others resigned, and another wave of subscription cancellations followed. Weymouth continues: “If the free press can be manipulated by politicians, if truth is viewed as optional, if The Washington Post goes dark under Bezos, then we lose more than a legend. We lose the very thing that makes America a democracy.”
Weymouth’s commentary is particularly damning in light of recent revelations about Bezos’ companies engaging with Trumpworld while the Post, at the same time, shifted its own editorial voice. It’s the kind of rebuke that ought to cut deep, given that it’s rooted in the legacy of the family that once owned The Washington Post — their ownership now relegated to a bygone era of journalism.
To be sure, none of this means the Post is finished. There are still plenty of talented reporters who fill its newsroom, but decisions from the leadership have nonetheless put the paper in a precarious spot. Legacy isn’t a business model. Without a clear editorial mission and a bold plan to rebuild reader loyalty, the fact of the matter is that even a paper as storied as The Washington Post won’t be able to successfully right the ship — and avoid the inevitable.
