The Washington Post

The Washington Post Editorial page --
the ultimate establishment organ

Glenn Greenwald,
2008-08-10

This contains articles
concerning the Washington Post in general.

2006

2006-12-11-NYT-Graham

Not Boasting, Even Though He Could
By DAVID CARR
New York Times, 2006-12-11

[A fairly brief article about the financial success of the Post of late,
despite the generally adverse weather for newspapers,
giving full credit for this success to its chairman, Donald E. Graham.]

2008

2008-02-10-WP-Weymouth-Katharine

Post Co. Names Weymouth Media Chief and Publisher
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post, 2008-02-08, page A1

[An excerpt:]

Katharine Weymouth,
a granddaughter of the late Washington Post Co. chairman Katharine Graham,
has been named chief executive of Washington Post Media,
a new division that will oversee The Washington Post newspaper
and its online component, washingtonpost.com,
the company said yesterday.

Weymouth, 41, will also serve as the newspaper’s publisher,
the fifth member of the Graham newspaper dynasty to hold that title
since her great-grandfather, Eugene Meyer,
bought The Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933.
She is the niece of Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham and
the daughter of Newsweek Senior Editor Lally Weymouth
and architect Yann Weymouth.

The newspaper and Web site operate separately and only Graham oversaw both;
he also oversees the entire Post Co., which has several business units.
In her new job,
Weymouth will take responsibility for the paper and Web site from Graham
and closely examine
the business and advertising departments of the newspaper and Web site,
a process that may lead to merging some operations.

...

As publisher, Weymouth succeeds Boisfeuillet Jones Jr., 61,
who has had the position since 2000.
He will become vice chairman of The Post Co.,
working with Graham on company-wide issues.
In addition to the newspaper, The Post Co. owns
the Kaplan education company,
Cable One cable company, six television stations and
several other publications, including Newsweek, Express and Slate.

At yesterday’s meeting, Graham pointed out that
Weymouth is the only Post Co. executive
who has held senior positions at the paper and the Web site,
a key qualification as the two media outlets continue to converge.

Graham also noted that
“our rate of success with publishers named Katharine has been outstanding.”

Weymouth said:
“While it is humbling to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors,
it is also very exciting.
I will do my best to honor their legacy and uphold the tradition they built
of journalistic excellence supported by a first-rate business operation.”

Weymouth joined The Post in 1996
and has been vice president of Post advertising since 2005.
She has served as counsel for both The Post and its Web site
in addition to holding other advertising jobs at the paper.
She is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School
and practiced law at Williams & Connolly in Washington
prior to coming to The Post.

Weymouth is divorced, has three children and lives in the District.
She is a niece of Tina Weymouth,
the bass guitarist in the new wave band Talking Heads.

...

Washington Post Media is designed
to forge a closer relationship between the business and advertising functions
of The Post newspaper and washingtonpost.com,
while maintaining separate newsrooms and editorial decision-making.
(The Post’s newsroom is in the District, the Web site’s is in Arlington.)

In the new division,
Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI),
Post President Stephen P. Hills and
Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.
will report to Weymouth, who will report to Graham.

Although relations between the paper and the Web site have been difficult at times, Downie said that is changing.

“The two newsrooms have been working increasingly closely together,
as can be seen most recently in coverage of the presidential election campaign
in the paper and on the Web site,”
he said.

“Our unique organization of the last 11 years,
with The Post and WPNI reporting separately to me, has been my doing,”
Graham said at yesterday’s meeting.
“I apologize to those of you who have been frustrated by this organization,
and that has been all of you;
its results have been my defense.
But everyone on both sides of the river, including Caroline [Little],
has now told me to change it somewhat,
and I am doing so.”

2008-06-24-WP-Downie-out

The Post's Top Editor to Step Down
Downie Has Led Paper Since 1991
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post, 2008-06-24

2008-09-30-WP-Foreign-Policy

Post Co. Buys Foreign Policy Magazine
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post, 2008-09-30

[1]
The Washington Post Co. has purchased Foreign Policy magazine
from a Washington think tank for an undisclosed sum,
the company announced yesterday.

[2]
The bimonthly glossy has a circulation of 100,000 and is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

[3]
“Foreign Policy is a terrific magazine, and I’m pleased it will become a part of our company,” said Donald E. Graham, Post Co. chairman. “Foreign Policy furthers our commitment to great magazine journalism and gives us another opportunity to expand our journalism online.”

[4]
The magazine’s new executive editor will be Susan Glasser, who stepped down from her job as The Post’s assistant managing editor for national news in April and has spent the past several months working as an adviser to Graham on next-generation news and how it’s going to look online.

[5]
Moisés Naim will remain Foreign Policy’s editor in chief.

[6]
According to a senior Carnegie Endowment official familiar with Foreign Policy’s finances, the magazine posts $1.3 million per year in losses.

[7]
Foreign Policy will be placed under The Post Co.’s Slate Group of publications, headed by Jacob Weisberg, which includes Slate magazine and TheRoot.com.

2008-10-28-WPCo-debt-rating

S& P Revises Post Co. Outlook to Negative
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post, 2008-10-28

[One may wonder why, with it’s overall economic outlook so gloomy,
the Wash. Post Co. bought the money-losing magazine Foreign Policy,
claimed to lose about one million a year,
just a month earlier.]

2012

2012-02-12-NYT-the-washington-post-recast-for-a-digital-future

A Newspaper, and a Legacy, Reordered
By JEREMY W. PETERS
New York Times Sunday Business, 2012-02-12

...

Traffic isn’t the only factor that editors examine
when determining whether to kill or expand a blog.
They can look at where online visitors are when they read the site.
And if their computers are registered with a government suffix —
.gov, .mil, .senate or .house —
editors know they are reaching the readers they want.
“That’s our influential audience,” Mr. Narisetti said.
“If a blog is over all not doing that great
but has a higher percentage of those,
we say don’t worry about it.”

...

2012-02-12-WP-what-buyouts-reveal-about-washington-post-strategy

What buyouts reveal about The Washington Post’s strategy
By Patrick B. Pexton, Post Ombudsman
Washington Post, 2012-02-12

[This is actually an interesting article.
Here is the first part of it, which gives most of the story.

In the list below, I have emphasized in red
those areas which I think the Post could and should cut back on.
We get more than enough opinion from Post already.
Their editorial page, for example,
always seems to know who should be ruling Burma (or is it Myanmar?).
For me, that is a matter for the Burmese (Myanmarians?) to determine.
As to all the rest of the Post's voluminous commentary,
as (fictional) Sgt. Joe Friday supposedly said,
"Just the facts, Ma'am".
Unlike, evidently, the rest of Washington,
I don't need the Post to shape my values and opinions for me.
By the way, once upon a time
that was done largely by (largely) Protestant ministers.
But now they seem to be largely ignored,
or present politically correct preachings to match the new "Zeitgeist",
or if (gasp) are politically incorrect, get ridiculed or condemned.

Anyhow, here is the start of the ombudsman's column:]

How will the voluntary buyouts announced by The Post this week — the fifth such round in the past nine years — affect the quality of the publication?

It’s early yet — I won’t know for several weeks who or how many will be leaving. The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents many employees here, gets a chance to weigh in on the terms of the buyout, then the paperwork comes out, and then Post employees have 45 days to decide.

This is a targeted buyout, aimed at some newsroom departments and not others. It is an attempt to cut costs but also an effort to shape the newsroom, and in that it reveals something about The Post’s strategy.

The Post hopes that 33 to 48 people will leave voluntarily, out of a newsroom of roughly 600 people, according to Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli and documents delivered to the guild. That doesn’t sound like a lot — maybe an 8 percent downsizing out of 600 if 48 leave.

The protected areas include, as Brauchli said,
the core of the publication’s mission:

national politics and government,
national security and foreign desks,
editorials and opinion,
Sunday Outlook,
Style columnists and arts critics,
Sports columnists,
news columnists, and
the Weekend and Going Out guides.

2012

2012-10-02-washington-post-gets-into-health-care-plans-to-buy-majority-of-celtic-healthcare

washington-post-gets-into-health-care-plans-to-buy-majority-of-celtic-healthcare Associated Press, 2012-10-02