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Posting by: Joel Susco
Date: June 8, 2009
This week I had the opportunity to listen to a talk given by Katharine Weymouth, the Chief Executive Officer of Washington Post Media (a unit of The Washington Post Company). Weymouth is the fifth member of the Graham newspaper dynasty to hold that title since her great-grandfather, Eugene Meyer, bought The Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933. She is the niece of Post Company Chairman Donald Graham, and granddaughter of the late Katharine Graham. She is the lone member of her generation of Grahams to work at the family-controlled, publicly-traded company. Weymouth’s current role makes her a logical successor to her uncle the Chairman.
It was enlightening to hear Weymouth discuss the struggles that the newspaper goes through today, compared to those of years ago. As Katharine simply explained, right now “the numbers suck.” The print medium is in trouble, but she has every intention for The Washington Post to survive for many years to come. In certain respects the problems on the surface seem different, but drilling down from cause to effect, the essence remains the same: maintaining the balance between revenues and costs. Distribution costs are through the roof and advertising revenues are down. Those printing standards such as ink, paper and shipping are always heavily-weighted costs, and the daily price of the newspaper keeps rising. Now, however, the competition comes from the “more free” press of news on the Internet, where advertising revenues are not obtained and measured the same way as in print, and the news stories themselves are usually accessed online for no cost to the viewer. Additionally, maintaining the balance between a newspaper with a national presence while still supporting the interests of a local readership is more unique to The Washington Post.
Weymouth realized that for the newspaper to get better, it must get smaller. Hard choices must be made about what can and cannot be covered. She is tasked with reinventing one of the world’s best newspapers in the age of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, iPhones and the like, and her success or failure at that endeavor will be an indicator of the industry to come. Although Weymouth grew up being a part of the family newspaper dynasty, she worked away from the business and the industry for years, and has returned to the fold poised to make or break the future of this dynasty. With the newspaper industry in its most vulnerable state ever, I hope Weymouth will keep us Post-ed for a long time to come.
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