The editor who has been in charge of The Washington Post newsroom ever since Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper is stepping down at the end of the month. In a new interview with The New Yorker, Post Executive Editor Marty Baron offers a bit of insight into working for the Amazon founder, what changed at the paper under Bezos and more.
Bezos purchased the Post for $250 million in August 2013. At the time, the move shocked media and tech watchers who considered newspapers a dying business and Bezos as someone who was interested in anything but.
Just a year before his purchase, Bezos told the German paper Berliner-Zeitung that there was one thing he was certain about: “There won’t be printed newspapers in 20 years. Maybe as luxury items in some hotels that want to offer them as an extravagant service. Printed papers won’t be normal in 20 years.”
Whether or not the Post will still be available in print in 2032, Bezos’ impact on the storied institution can already be measured, according to what Baron told The New Yorker.
“When Jeff Bezos acquired the Post, in 2013, he fundamentally changed our strategy — and that was to go from being a news organization that was focussed primarily on our region to being a news organization that would be national, and even international. He said at the time, and he was correct, that we are in an ideal position to do so because we are in the nation’s capital. That’s a good base for that. We have the name The Washington Post, which can be leveraged to a national scale, unlike a lot of other names of publications around the country. And we have a history and a heritage that shape our identity, which is, going back to Watergate, shining a light on dark corners. The implication is that we didn’t have to go off to a retreat to figure out who the hell we were. So, with that, we became national.”
For those who know how Amazon obsesses over customers, Baron also said that Bezos wanted the newspaper to adopt that focus, and forget a bit about the competition.
“Now it’s only natural that, when you do that and you start to have some success — which we fortunately did — that we would start thinking about who our competitors are and how we can position ourselves,” Baron said. “Naturally, as you know, there are not that many national publications or media outlets, and, certainly, there are fewer with national-newspaper heritage. The Times, of course, is eminent among them, and so we do think of ourselves as competing with the New York Times. But we’re not obsessed with the competition. We were really, I think, obsessed with what we could do to make ourselves as appealing as possible to the public and gain more readers. And, so, that’s how we see ourselves.”
In Baron’s view, Bezos bought the Post because “he actually believes in the mission of journalism; that he thinks it’s really important for a democracy; that he believes in democracy quite firmly; and that he thinks it’s important to have an institution like the Washington Post and to make sure that it has a bright future, has a sustainable business model, and can do its work properly.”
With his understanding of technology and “a sophisticated understanding of consumer behavior,” Bezos was positioned to help the Post succeed.
“My guess is also that he thought it was an interesting challenge, and my sense of him is that he likes challenges, and that he thought that this was doable,” Baron said. “And, going back to what I said about how he shifted our strategy, he saw an opportunity that I think others did not see, and that’s what makes him him. He recognized that, if we could shift our strategy to being national, and even international, we could turn the Post around. Because he felt that while focussing on our region was perhaps the right strategy for a different era, it wasn’t the right strategy for the current one.
“And, by the way, we weren’t that expensive,” Baron added.
Not by Bezos’ standards, The New Yorker replied.
Baron announced on Jan. 26 that he was retiring after a 45-year career in journalism. Bezos offered up a career transition announcement of his own a week later when he said he’d be stepping aside as CEO of Amazon 27 years after conceiving of the idea for the Seattle-based company. He said he would continue to focus on the Post and his other passion projects.
Baron detailed a bit of how the Post has covered Amazon, saying that there was no special editorial process when it came to stories about the owner’s other company.
“We treat it like anything else that we do,” Baron said. “When he first met with his staff, he said, ‘Cover me the way you cover anybody else, and cover Amazon the way you cover any other company.’ He’s reiterated that on several occasions, and I’ve never experienced anything that calls that into question. He hasn’t interfered in any way whatsoever with our coverage. And I’ve never heard a complaint, never heard a suggestion, never heard anything.
“Sometimes I wonder whether we feel that we have to be even more aggressive just to prove that we’re not being controlled in some way by our boss,” Baron said. “I don’t even know what his reactions to our stories are. I’ve never talked to him about it. I certainly have never had any intention of bringing it up, either. And, thankfully, he didn’t bring it up, either. So I don’t know. I just cover it like anything else.”
