HOW?

A Way Forward (and Back) for the Washington Post

A reminder of of what is at stake…

Jeff Bezos came to Washington last week and hosted at his mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood a four-hour meeting and lunch with the Washington Post’s (interim) CEO Jeff D’Onofrio, executive editor Matt Murray, and about thirty “executives, editorial leaders and journalists” for a presentation and discussion about the company.

The most detailed account of the occasion I found was in the Puck newsletter, behind a paywall, from which I will share what, to me, were the most relevant points. Attendees were not permitted to have their phones in the room and presumably chose not to publicly share what was said.

• Bezos made it clear that he wants to “save” the Post and has turned down seven offers to sell it.

• The layoffs of three hundred people from the news staff in February were based on results of data collected about what subscribers of the Post were reading. For example, readership of the sports section was judged not significant enough to be maintained.

• The data showed that the core of political and national security news and investigative reporting should be the Post’s focus and would be henceforth.

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Having watched the continuing tribulations of the Washington Post for more than two years, I have been thinking and consulting with Post alumni from its glorious past and others who might have ideas to share about a turnaround strategy that could restore the Post’s stature and financial viability.

What I have learned about the apparent plan for the Post partly reflects my thinking but is not nearly enough to resolve the crisis. Nor did what I heard in an interview with Murray on a Puck podcast just after the firings, the day before Bezos finally sacked the hapless CEO, Will Lewis, after he was spotted at a Super Bowl event in San Francisco.

Murray’s message was that with the layoffs, the “table had been set” for the Post’s recovery, which was apparently also Bezos’s message in the meeting last week.

So what would I argue is a different and better strategy? Let me start by saying with emphasis that this is THE WASHINGTON POST, the only major news organization based in the capital of the United States, where monumental decisions of global national consequence are made.

It is also (or was) far and away the most important news organization in a metropolitan area of roughly 6.5 million people — and what could be, with energy and innovation, a financial base again for a revived Post, as it was for so long in the past.

Recognizing the Post’s strengths and the limitations that have been revealed in the recent years of decline, this should become two news organizations, with subscription models for one or both.

Back to the Future

In its heyday, from the 1970s to the early 2000s, the Washington Post’s newsroom grew from about the size it is now, around five hundred people, to the larger numbers it was before this latest round of layoffs.

The Post had a formidable and eventually outstanding national and foreign staff, where I spent most of my eighteen years at the paper. The emergence of the Style section in the late 1960s was transformational, not just at the Post but also more widely in the world of journalism, because of its lively approach to feature coverage that was as readable as any in upscale magazines.

The Post also had a small but talented group of cultural critics, who were nationally known. Many won Pulitzer Prizes in their fields.

Over the years a common shorthand for newspapers of power and impact became “the Times and the Post,” as though they were virtually twins. (It has to be said that the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times resented being relegated to a second tier.)

In fact, those of us at the Post always knew that in many respects the New York Times was much bigger in scale and reach. New York was the cultural and financial capital of the country, which was reflected in the coverage of those subjects and the advertising base that they provided.

For all its stature and international reputation through its location in the capital and its joint publication with the Times of the International Herald Tribune, the Post was fundamentally a metropolitan paper with, by choice, virtually no national distribution.

The Times’s current dominance of sidelines such as puzzles and cooking has been longstanding. In the 1990s, when I was the publisher of Times Books at Random House, I (somewhat improbably) was responsible for a crossword and games franchise, which was one of the most reliably profitable pieces of the company.

We would occasionally slip in a Post crossword puzzle book.

Craig Claiborne’s writing about food for the Times was also enormously popular, as were his cookbooks.

Perhaps the greatest fallacy in this misbegotten era is that the Washington Post’s role is to compete with the New York Times — or anyone else, for that matter.

The Post should not try to match the Times, where it can’t do so and never has. At last count, the Times has 2,300 people in the news operation.

Instead, the Post should renew and expand its demonstrated expertise in politics, national security, international reporting, and investigative journalism, emphasizing depth and expertise. Breaking news is available everywhere. Murray has said that this is his intention. Good.

An interesting new model for global reporting in the digital age is Noosphere, the enterprise recently started by Jane Ferguson, who made her name at the PBS News Hour. She has assembled a group of experienced freelance correspondents in a number of places who provide video, podcast, photo, and text pieces that are distributed to subscribers.

Today’s generation of journalists have to be multifaceted, presenters as well as reporters.

A revived Style section should devote itself again to Washington in its current guise, where matters colorful, controversial, and bizarre are rampant. A Style signature was the publication of profiles of luminaries, with a captivatingly fresh voice. Today’s Washington is replete with likely subjects for portrayals of this kind.

How to attract the talent for these spirited coverage areas?

As I wrote months ago, most of the Post’s stars — the people who have left for other jobs or have recently been laid off — became stars through the work they did at the Post.

With a much-needed assurance of the owner’s support beyond what has been heard from Jeff Bezos so far, and a commitment to a determined outreach for possible hires and raising the morale of the many excellent reporters and editors still at the Post, the effect would soon become clear in this particularly turbulent era.

The Homecoming

The Washington Post’s other traditional great strength was its metro and sports coverage for what is known as the DMV — the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Politics, education, business, and other local topics, along with major sports franchises, connected the sprawling region.

This metropolitan area, with a prosperous and diverse population, should be served by a news organization with resources appropriate to its size and, significantly, its enormous commercial potential.

This metro version of the Post would restore local news and sports coverage. (Under the rubric of “for further reading,” the Post as a good neighbor could cross-promote with the smaller and upstart news organizations in the region.)

Ultimately in any business, fiscal success comes from earned revenue. My much-repeated mantra about the Post, quoting the late Katharine Graham, was that it was “Woodward & Bernstein and Woodward & Lothrop” (the downtown department store) — great journalism and abundant advertising that made it so profitable.

The Post, like all news organizations, now relies mainly on digital news delivery, and the belief is that advertising online cannot match in revenue what it had been in print.

But an imaginative and aggressive approach to metro advertising solicitation and presentation would enable businesses across the region to reach all potential customers, the way zones were designed for the print editions in the past.

Craigslist famously replaced classified advertising in newspapers. How about a Post version of Craigslist across all the categories that people now need to search from any number of sites? Local tech support is as important today as plumbers and electricians always have been. Paid obituaries seem to be lucrative.

The Post maintained its extensive metro circulation for so long by keeping the price of the daily paper artificially low, at a quarter or so. Today, the Post’s online subscription price is also kept low with offers and gimmicks.

Continue that policy — but develop a different pricing strategy for the national and international version of the daily report, whose readers generally expect subscription costs that are somewhat higher.

A word about the opinion section. The reaction to Jeff Bezos’s announcement in February 2025 about the restructuring of the section to conform to his views on liberty and trade was intense, resulting in mass cancellations.

In our online news universe, opinions come from every direction. Every point of view is easily available. That is an accepted reality. The Post should accept this as well.

The print paper is still distributed. I subscribe. It makes me sad. There is a front section of news, but everything else is, bluntly, pathetic: the remnants of sports, comics, and the classifieds come before a couple of pages of local news.

Digital first and foremost is inevitable. But if you want to continue with a niche print newspaper, make it feel worth the price. To get the New York Times, daily and Sunday, delivered to your door now costs about $1,000 annually.

If you want a print paper, be ready to pay for it.

“Back to the Future” and “Homecoming” may seem awfully retro. But consider this: the current trajectory for the Washington Post is oblivion.