You Too Can Be a "Star"

...In Journalism

Journalism’s Future Stars, 2025 Interns at The Washington Post,

The lineup of reporters,columnists, and editors leaving the Washington Post in the past couple of years is invariably presented as an exodus of “stars” and reflects the problems that the Post has had in the latter years of Jeff Bezos’s ownership.

That the Post began losing money after a successful run and has had upheavals in newsroom leadership in the troubled tenure of the publisher Will Lewis is an undisputed reality.

But I want to make a case for aspiring journalists, and even those with some years of experience, that this may be the right time to try for a job at the Post. Why? Because while nearly all of the stars who are leaving excelled in their various roles, it was the Post that gave them the platform from which to display their talent.

Reaching back decades in the annals of the Post to support my point: In the 1970s, much of the paper’s foreign coverage relied on young stringers in far-flung trouble spots. There was Bill Branigin in Tehran during the revolution there, Michael Dobbs in Eastern Europe as Soviet hegemony reached its apogee, Caryle Murphy in southern Africa in apartheid’s heyday, and Karen DeYoung in West Africa.

Branigin, Dobbs, and Murphy (who later won a Pulitzer) became Post stalwarts with impressive careers, and DeYoung has had one of the most illustrious records of anyone at the paper — as a correspondent, senior editor, and, to this very day, an ace on the national security beat.

DeYoung’s editors on the national desk, relative newcomers, talk about her with enormous respect for what she has done and continues to do in these exceptionally turbulent times.

Today’s staff at the Washington Post, even after buyouts and layoffs, is considerably larger than it was when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as local reporters, made history that is still the benchmark for journalism of impact.

And the Post’s circulation in the Washington, D.C., area then was roughly half of what it is today around the world — the majority of which, of course, is now digital rather than print.

The Post’s strength came from two things: the commitment of Katharine Graham and her family to the company and the newsroom, and the Post’s overwhelming dominance in the Washington advertising marketplace, which was its principal source of revenue.

As Mrs. Graham would say, “The Post is Woodward and Bernstein and Woodward and Lothrop,” the downtown department store, now long gone.

I was there in that era, and we always felt that in the competition with the New York Times for stature, the Times had resources we could not match, although we were more aware of that than was generally believed.

But the Post’s energy was a great asset. The Style section reinvented coverage of the arts, society, culture, and even politics everywhere, including at the stuffier Times. And during the tenure of Leonard Downie Jr. (1991-2008), the Post set a record for the most Pulitzer Prizes awarded under a single executive editor — twenty-five.

The stars leaving the Post now seem mainly to be going to the Times and The Atlantic, currently among the acknowledged leaders in legacy media (“legacy” meaning that they have been around from well before the internet upended the business model of news).

But my personal and not altogether uninformed view is that there are already so many notables at the Times and The Atlantic that space in the limelight is crowded. I won’t name names, but my sense is that a number of the new arrivals are less visible in their roles than they were at the Post.

The competition for major play is intense. And stars tend to be impatient for luster. Many of the biggest news stories carry multiple bylines these days, diminishing the glory that goes with exclusives.

So, what the Post badly needs now is this:

The attention of Jeff Bezos. What does his attention mean? A good start would mean a renewal of his initial enthusiasm for the Post’s prospects: editorially by adding staff, a savvy approach to digital reach, and imaginative ideas for reinventing the company’s business model.

Bezos has said publicly that his intention is to return the Post to greatness, as he did in the early years of his ownership. Personally, and apparently politically, his priorities seem to have changed. We will see whether the mission can be resurrected.

The second requirement is to attract, nurture, and feature reporters and editors among whom will come the next generation of stars.

I can say this with certainty because all those many years ago, I saw it happening to my generation’s reporters and editors at the Post, on their way to being the absolute best in journalism. Seeing talent emerge is a thrill — and worth the effort for all concerned.