7
In nominating the entry, editor Baron
wrote that “Post reporters produced
more than a dozen deeply reported
stories that defied conventional
wisdom about police shootings,”
adding that “police experts praised
the Post’s coverage.” (As president of
the Dow Jones News Fund, publisher
of this magazine, I’m proud to note
that Wesley Lowery, the Post staff
writer who urged editors to build the
database and analyze the statistical
information, was a News Fund intern
in 2010 and 2011.)
The Post’s latest Pulitzer came
about half a year later after a highly
publicized achievement online.
Last October, the Post’s website
attracted almost 67 million unique
visitors, topping the New York Times,
according to comScore, a by-product
of the Post’s increasing emphasis on
digital publishing in the new Bezos
era.
The Post’s renaissance was also
illustrated in mid-May when Donald
Trump accused the paper, which
he said was purchased as a “toy”
by Bezos, of being used to protect
Amazon’s tax practices after Post
reporters began investigating
Trump’s business career. Baron
denied that the Amazon CEO was
involved in the coverage of the
presidential campaign. Responding,
Bezos asserted that Trump’s criticism
was not “an appropriate way for a
presidential candidate to behave.”
“In its revamp, the Post is following
some of Amazon’s tactics,” the
insightful Economist newspaper
has observed. “Much as Mr. Bezos
has made his e-commerce firm
concentrate on building scale first,
and worrying about profits later, he
is making his newspaper concentrate
first on building a broader national
and international audience….It
is promoting its journalism more
assiduously on social networks, is
offering readers curated content
from elsewhere on the Internet, and
is making its web
pages load faster.”
Although he
has spent his
professional life on
Martin Baron
print newspapers—
including the Miami Herald, Los
Angeles Times, New York Times
and Boston Globe—Baron has
been an enthusiastic partner in this
transformation of the Post.
In an extensive interview on C-SPAN,
Baron said:
“The strategy in the previous era
was articulated as for and about
Washington…. Now, under Jeff
Bezos, our strategy is to become a
true national news organization,
and then maybe even international
over time. And so that’s a significant
change. We do that because we now
live in a digital era and we have an
opportunity to reinvent ourselves…
and to reach many more people,
millions of people, we haven’t been
able to reach before.
“We don’t have to deliver a
newspaper to their doorstep. We
don’t have to print a newspaper
piggy-backing on presses of other
newspapers around the country. They
can read us on our website, they can
read us through Facebook, they can
read us…via Twitter.”
Yet while ensuring that the Post
becomes “a truly digital news
organization,” Baron said he wants
“to make sure that we continue to
be a news organization that does
really important and ambitious work.
That we take on difficult stories. That
we hold powerful institutions and
powerful individuals accountable.” In
short, he concluded, “I want us to be
journalistically ambitious and digitally
innovative.”
An eminently sound approach with
one of the world’s savviest and
wealthiest executives behind you.