Washington Post's New Mission Statement

[wicked]

I didn't know that and that's amazing. But that's also called investing in your infrastructure and news orgs by and large have failed spectacularly there.

The Times could’ve gone of two ways around 2009: Out of business or doubled down on tech. They did the latter. The Post did the same thing for a long time, until Bezos decided DOD contracts were more important.

 

[HanSenSE]

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I'm sure our lord and savior will exert pressure on the Times soon enough to get rid of her.

 

[Jesus_Muscatel]

Here are some that I remember -- hey, I'm old and I retired nearly 12 years ago.
-- Box of See's candy at Christmas. Turned out they were paid for with profits from the vending machines in the break room. Coupon for a small turkey at a market (might have even been a Cornish game hen). Turned out the company did an advertising tradeout to get the coupons.
-- Raises: from 1 to 5 percent, but we were told 3 was the average. If you got 4, somebody else was only going to get 2. Never got a 5.
-- I think a got a middling grade for "phone skills" on an evaluation. Answering the phone was not my job, so if I had to do take a call, it meant that five others didn't. I shrugged off that one.
-- Not me but I heard this. Gannett always was praised for promoting people. One guy, who "liked sports" got promoted to be an assistant sports editor at a decent-sized midwest/eastern metro from a one-horse town. Haha, the job's shift was from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. In other words, Gannett was desperate to find somebody to fill that job and had to go to Hooterville to find someone.
-- One paper had a "quartile system" of payroll. Four different segments of a pay scale that I never figured out. You could only rise to the top of your quartile. I think, not sure, that the only way to get into a higher quartile was to get a different job in the company.
-- The whole OT/Comp thing. They told us no OT. Comp had to be approved in advance and had to be taken within the same pay period. Yeah, but if something came up late Friday or Saturday or Sunday, there were no bosses around to clear it and there was no appropriate time to take it. Just didn't work. But the way most of us are wired, you just do the job the best you can and suck it up, fair or not. And you always got into the discussion of travel and whether you're working when your butt is in an airplane seat.

Or a rental car, in my case, when we were still hourly employees. (W. took care of that with a stroke of the pen ...)

 

[Jesus_Muscatel]

Stick it, Bezos.

 

[HanSenSE]

 

[wicked]

espndc.com? I thought that strategy died 10 years ago? Also adding a bunch of writers, but not one editor?

 

[playthrough]

The editors wouldn't get the splashy release -- and in this case it's definitely some chest-thumping by espn, but great seeing the Post folks land on their feet. But there's more out there that still need to catch a break.

 

[TigerVols]

The editors wouldn't get the splashy release -- and in this case it's definitely some chest-thumping by espn, but great seeing the Post folks land on their feet. But there's more out there that still need to catch a break.

Yes there are.

 

[wicked]

there's more out there that still need to catch a break.

I hope whoever was covering PG or Fairfax preps lands somewhere. Those are the folks who often fall through the cracks, along with the deskers.

 

[LanceyHoward]

The on-line publication Puck is running a lot of articles about the Washington Post, including a lunch he just hosted for the top 30 or so personnel at the Post. This may be behind a paywall but the one key factoid for this audience is that the entire sports staff got booted because they did not generate enough enough clicks. That seems to be the rationale behind most of the firings,

https://puck.news/

I think the reason that the Post was drawing so few readers for its sports section is that most of the paper is formatted to appeal to the national audience. I read somewhere that something like 80-90% of the the subscribers live outside the DMV. Those subscribers are not going to read local sports stories, no matter how well they are done.

But it leads me to wonder how readership for sports is holding up at other large metros?

 

[Severian]

The on-line publication Puck is running a lot of articles about the Washington Post, including a lunch he just hosted for the top 30 or so personnel at the Post. This may be behind a paywall but the one key factoid for this audience is that the entire sports staff got booted because they did not generate enough enough clicks. That seems to be the rationale behind most of the firings,

https://puck.news/

I think the reason that the Post was drawing so few readers for its sports section is that most of the paper is formatted to appeal to the national audience. I read somewhere that something like 80-90%
od the subscribers are live outside the DMV. Those subscribers are not going to read local sports stories, no matter how well they are done.

But it leads me to wonder how readership for sports is holding up at other large metros?

Dylan Byers is a known Will Lewis/Jeff Bezos bootlicker, and all his "scoops" about The Post's ongoing downfall should be taken with a barrel of salt.

 

[wicked]

There’s a good reason sports traffic on their site wasn’t what it is for other legacy sites. The D.C. fan base for the most part isn’t a huge one. The Commanders have tons of fans because by default they were the DMV/Carolinas’ team for so long. The Caps have been consistently successful for almost 20 years now and so many DMV folks are from non-hockey cities, so they have no allegiances. The only time the Nats drew well was when they were very good. Never been to a Wizards game but the place seems like a mausoleum anytime I watch a game from there.

 

[TrooperBari]

Newspaper executives shocked to learn journalism (as opposed to punditry) actually costs money.

 

[LanceyHoward]

The Washington Post ran an editorial yesterday criticizing EV subsidies and extolling the virtues of limited government. I posted a comment asking how long it would take for the Post to run an editorial endorsing Trump's request for an increase in the defense budget. The rationale for this increase would be largely to subsidize the use of fossil fuels by protecting their movement.

The Post ran an editorial today endorsing a larger defense budget. Rarely do my prophecies come true, and never so quickly.

 

[DanOregon]

Shoot at this rate, the Post might put the Washington Examiner out of business. It's almost like the Post now exists only as a daily reminder to the Trump Administration that Bezos still needs those federal computer and aerospace contracts.

 

[Severian]

the Post might put the Washington Examiner out of business.

They should merge at this point.

 

[wicked]

Shoot at this rate, the Post might put the Washington Examiner out of business. It's almost like the Post now exists only as a daily reminder to the Trump Administration that Bezos still needs those federal computer and aerospace contracts.

He “needs” jack ****.

 

[DanOregon]

No duh.

 

[FileNotFound]

Coincidentally, amidst steep drops in print circulation among all newspapers, the two whose drops were steepest were the ones who decided to not endorse a presidential candidate.

US newspaper circulations 2025: Washington Post print declines 21% in a year