Washington Post sold. What next?
The immense pressure on newspapers in the digital era has forced many a hard decision on the industry. In India, this was evident with the closure of The Times Group’s weekend read, Crest, and three international magazines published by the Outlook Group. In the United States, the fact that the going is getting tougher was made known through a surprise, and for some, shocking decision – the Amazon Group taking over The Washington Post, one of the country’s iconic newspapers. Internet pioneer and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos has paid about $250 million in cash for The Post and a bunch of smaller sister publications -- some suburban papers and a Latino-oriented publication in Washington, one geared for younger readers. Noticeably, the news of The Post sale came just days after Boston Red Sox owner John Henry bought the Boston Globe from the New York Times Company. The Post was owned by the Graham family, which sustained it for nearly 90 years, living by one of the most fundamental commandments by the man who started it, Eugene Meyer. Meyer had said in 1933 that a “newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owner”. The purchase has thus ended nearly eight decades of ownership by the Graham family after Meyer bought it at an auction in 1933. His daughter, Katharine Graham, led the paper as it rose to national prominence in the 1970s, first with its coverage of the Pentagon Papers under executive editor Ben Bradlee and then Watergate with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting that brought down President Richard Nixon. Her son Donald Graham followed in her footsteps. Subscriptions peaked in 1993 at more than 8,00,000, but like many other papers, The Post has faced declining circulation and ad revenue in the digital age. The fact that the management had not figured out how to really make money on the digital side, in the way they had hoped, was manifested in Don Graham’s reflection on the sale: “Our future is digital. We knew we could keep The Post alive. But our aspirations for The Post have always been higher than that.” The news outlet in recent years closed all of its regional bureaux across the US, while also reducing the number of foreign correspondents overseas. Reactions to the closure ranged from acceptance to shock, grief, humility and even cynicism as the news sunk in. The Post’s own employees wrote a string of opinions describing their own struggle to come to terms with the change of hands. An employee, Michelle Singletary, noted the panic in her that is so synonymous with today’s employees as the world economy sees red and layoffs on shorter notice periods become part of the accepted rulebook. “What would this mean for my job and, most important, my pension?” she wondered, while another opinion piece by editorial writer Ruth Marcus was crisply titled “The day our earth stood still”. Marcus observed: “Intellectually, I and my colleagues get it. Emotionally, we are reeling. To us, as to the city, the Grahams are the paper. Monday afternoon was the day our earth stood still.” Another writer, Kathleen Parker, seemed to have resigned to fate; she wrote: “All things change. Children grow up, parents die, families adapt and evolve. With therapy — and perhaps a little cash infusion — this one will, too.” Others wrote in appreciation of the Graham family; David Ignatius noted: “Many of us can still hear echoes of Bradlee’s voice in the story conference room, telling jokes or teasing editors or making snide remarks about people we were covering. As a young editor, I used to linger in that room to hear every word from Bradlee or his successor, Len Downie, or the other gods, and would often walk out thinking, I can’t believe they pay me to do this job.” That the move was scorned at could not be missed; Carter Eskew said: “For now, we have to rely on patrons to save journalism. What kind of patron will Bezos be? Bezos built the greatest retailer in history understanding and anticipating what people want and giving it to them. But that’s an incomplete model for the news business. What people want is local, sports, human interest, gossip and rancorous and self-reinforcing debate. All that is great, but it needs to be put in service of what people and our democracy need: hard information, accountability, truth. That is what Bezos bought yesterday, and you can’t put a price on it. Now he must protect it.” A transition isn’t easy on anyone. The sale of The Post has forced many to relook at the news businesses that have definitely been revolutionized. The rise of the Internet and the epochal change from Print to digital technology has created a massive wave of competition for traditional news companies, scattering readers and advertisers across a radically altered news and information landscape and triggering mergers, bankruptcies and consolidation among the owners of Print and broadcasting properties. This also means many great news organizations are folding up or are being sold at a fraction of what they are worth. In many ways, the sale is also an indicator of a kind of cultural baton-passing. Bezos and his fellow tech entrepreneurs are taking the role in society once allotted to socially and politically powerful Washington-based families like the Grahams. It indicates this transition from the broadsheet to the digital, a move that will have to be invariably accepted with time. So much so that the sale of The Post has given rise to rumours of other newspapers owned by families for generations like The New York Times being the next to go under the hammer. But one wonders what will happen when time, interest and the cash that comes in handy to today’s tech-millionaires runs out. Even the digital world is in constant oscillation. It remains to be seen if Bezos himself, who is so synonymous with everything Internet, can really save the news on a paper and be the saviour he is already being hailed as. It will have to be left to time to ascertain if he can use his business skills to usher in innovation and magic into a broadsheet. Or it could just be that the great mastery in terms of great news will now need people and readers who are willing to support it. Feedback: abatra@exchange4media.com
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