Media circles across the pond are abuzz with the news that Robert Winnett is heading to the USA to take up the job as editor at The Washington Post, but not until after the US election. He’s the latest appointment by publisher Will Lewis following the sudden departure of Sally Buzbee. Winnett joins a handful of British journalists who have moved to America, including Emma Tucker, the editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, and Joanna Coles, chief creative and content officer at The Daily Beast. Is this the beginning of a British invasion of the American media?
Alan and Lionel are joined by NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, who reflects on the rapid changes at the Washington Post. He observes that becoming editor at this stage of an election year would be like “learning to kayak in a tsunami”. Alan and Lionel are also joined by Peter Foster, public policy editor at the Financial Times, who has known Robert for many years. Peter explains how he thinks Rob’s qualities as an editor will lead him to a successful tenure at the Post.
This transcript is unedited and may contain errors:
Alan Rusbridger: Hello and welcome back to Media Confidential, your weekly deep dive behind the headlines, beyond the clickbait of the rapidly moving and contested world of the media with me, Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber.: And me, Lionel Barber. Today, the redcoats are back. There's been a shakeup at The Washington Post. Sally Buzbee, the editor, has resigned and has been replaced by an interim editor Matt Murray, who will in turn be replaced by Robert Winnett, the Deputy editor of The Telegraph. Are you still with me, Alan?
Alan: I'm sure it makes sense to somebody, but keep going.
Lionel: Anyway, with yet another Brit filling one of the top media jobs in the US, is the US media slowly being taken over by the British Red Coats?
Alan: How will those British editors fare in this crucial year with elections on both sides of the Atlantic and with Robert Winnett taking charge of The Washington Post right after the US election?
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Lionel: First, Alan, what have you been up to? What's been grabbing your attention?
Alan: Well, first, as Media Confidential, we ought to offer our congratulations to 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch, who has finally found happiness in marriage for the fifth time, I think. Would you like to join me, Lionel, in sending the show's best congratulations?
Lionel: Yes, Alan. I'd love to offer congratulations to my former employer back in the early '80s.
Alan: It's a very touching love story, and we wish them well. There's a curious tradition that The Daily Mail is always invited in to witness these events, and he got front-page billing for this wedding. I also noticed this week that there's a libel suit by Crispin Odey against your old paper, The FT, Lionel.
Lionel: Well, I'm sure that Roula Khalaf, the editor, will be looking at it closely. At the same time, I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of the legal case. Obviously, The FT did do several stories about Crispin Odey being accused by numerous women of sexual [crosstalk] more than 15. I went back over the stories just because I knew this would probably come up. I have to say, there was a lot of solid reporting, not just the women themselves, who remain confidential, but their friends, family notes. I don't know why Crispin Odey, the top fund manager in London, he had to step down as a result of these stories, why he's waited a year to come at The Financial Times. There is a separate civil case, by the way, brought against Crispin Odey by two women, and we'll have to see how it pans out, whether it does actually go to court.
Alan: My applaud of the week goes to Victoria Derbyshire, who I think is shaping up to be a pretty punchy news night presenter and really knows her stuff. I'm personally very glad that Iain Dale, who for my money, does one of the best radio shows in the country, he resigned, as reverse Nigel Farage, he resigned to fight a [unintelligible 00:03:57]
Lionel: In Tunbridge Wells.
Alan: Tunbridge Wells. Discovered that he had said some disobliging things about Tunbridge Wells, so he promptly resigned as a candidate and is back in his seat at LBC broadcasting in the evening. Politics' loss is journalism's gain.
Lionel: Is that what you call the revolving door?
Alan: Revolving faster than I could keep up with. He was back in his seat almost before most people had noticed that he was gone.
Lionel: Yes, it's interesting because there was some rumors about Nigel Farage actually saying some disobliging things about Clacton-on-Sea, but I haven't been able to actually establish the precise source, so I probably shouldn't have mentioned that, but I don't think he's going to be standing down. He's going to actually run, and it's going to be a very big deal whether he wins.
Alan: There's a danger that Farage becomes like a Trump figure in which he has the media so besotted and dazzled by what are undoubtedly his great communication skills that they give him a wildly disproportionate amount of airspace.
Lionel: Well, he is good on television, he is good on radio. I thought Michelle Hussein, another shout-out for a top broadcaster, gave him a really hard but fair time questioning some of his comments about levels of immigration, about whether there is a need for this country for which, I think, Michelle Hussein quite rightly put that case to him and made him uncomfortable. The danger is, as you say, that he gets top billing day in, day out. This is early. Having done a spectacular U-turn and decided to actually run for Parliament, I think it's fair enough that this was big news today, but what we don't want, or it shouldn't happen, it's up to editors, is to have a more balanced approach, not just go for the entertainment, in the coming weeks.
Alan: I noticed a couple of times last year that Farage was going to Clacton to do his show and he did an hours program live in prime time from Clacton, and it was almost as though he was using GB News to help roll the pitch for him in that constituency before announcing. Anyway, we've been there before and we will be there again.
Lionel: Indeed. I'm about to go, as you say, off back to the States. I'll be spending some time in Washington but also New York. I think from my inbox, I'm afraid it's all about the election. It's all about Trump. I got a WhatsApp message yesterday, giving 17 reasons why Donald Trump will win the election. Why he's stronger than Biden, ranging from everything from the youth vote, to Biden's troubles with the Middle East, weak leadership, age, the border down in Mexico, and related to that, I noticed that Donald Trump, who a few years ago was threatening to ban TikTok, is now making a big deal about being on TikTok. Fancy that.
Alan: Gruesome thought. Enjoy your time in the States and next week you must report back on what you've discovered about the mood there.
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Lionel: An email dropped into the inboxes of Washington Post staff on Sunday evening informing them that their editor, Sally Buzbee, formerly editor-in-chief of the Associated Press, will be stepping down after barely three years in the job. The news caught the staff totally unaware. The Monday morning meeting sounds a pretty tense affair according to some of those who were present. Since Sally Buzbee joined The Post, they've won six Pulitzer Prizes, three of which came this year.
Alan: Following on from the legendary editor, Marty Baron, was always going to be a challenge for Sally. Plus, when she took over, most of the staff weren't actually in the newsroom due to the pandemic. Will Lewis, the new CEO, said the move was needed to, "Take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path."
Lionel: When Will Lewis' email came to light, social media certainly went slightly crazy. Journalists and commentators were taking to ex-Twitter to air their views, report what had happened, what was said then at the Monday meeting. A journalist and author, Brian Stelter explained that Lewis had told his team bluntly to get with the program. David Folkenflik is the media correspondent to America's National Public Radio, NPR, and he's been chatting to several people who were party to the events at The Post, and he's on the line with us.
Alan: We're very pleased to be joined by David Folkenflik, the veteran- Can I call you veteran, David?
David Folkenflik: I think sadly, you can.
Alan: -media correspondent. You did a long thread this morning on what we must call X. Tell me your take on this news which has come completely out of the blue.
David: In one small sense, it doesn't come out of the blue, in that Will Lewis says, publisher and chief executive at The Post had announced these new ways in which he wanted to build things, to fix things, to move on things, portraying The Post as a place of action, a man on the move. In many ways it was very much a surprise. It happened in East Coast Time here in the States, played out pretty much as dusk was turning to dark, and took the entire staff by surprise. I was able to get hold of a staff memo pretty much moments before a news release went out today in a staff meeting.
Lewis conceded that this wasn't how they wanted it to play out, but they felt that news reports were starting to leak. While there were some questions as to whether Sally Buzbee, who was named in early 2021, was going to hang on under Lewis. There'd been no announcement that she would be stepping down at a certain point after the election, as often happens. There was no posting of the job, no known interview process. We haven't heard that people went to kiss the ring or kneel in front of the great Jeff Bezos, who owns The Post, of course, as a personal property. None of the processes or people intrigue that we've come to expect at great titles like The Post.
Alan: There are two editors coming in to replace one. Do you understand the distinction between the executive editor, which is going to an ex-veteran from The Wall Street Journal, and the editor, which is going to somebody from The Daily Telegraph? What's the delineation between those two jobs?
David: The clearest delineation, I would say, is that one is British and one is not, but if we were going to get into the actual characteristics of it, I think there's an extra twist. We can talk in a moment about the structure that's being put together. Will Lewis has talked about the creation of what he's devised as a third newsroom, which sounds very third-wavy and exciting and very digital in social media age and all that, but there's also this other thing happening. The defenestration of Sally Buzbee, which is what it was, took place and was effective instantaneously, like Matt Murray this morning is leading the newsrooms. He's doing it through the beginning of November.
On November, I think it's sixth or whatever the day is, essentially after the election, Matt Murray will no longer lead the newsroom. He will go to lead this third area. What you're saying is you are appointing a news chief for a temporary stretch to get us through the American news cycle. Well, this is slightly analytical. I've interviewed, probably talked to about a dozen people with knowledge of various pieces of this puzzle in the last 12 hours, call it, or 15 hours, but he clearly wanted Rob Winnett to come in from The Telegraph and do this.
Winnett, of course, is in the middle of your own election season, just announced for Prime Minister. It's quite a thing to pull a guy out in the midst of that, but also, if you were coming and learning The Post, learning Washington, learning America, a place where he's never led a news organization or been a senior journalist from it, doesn't really know the political climate here versus the one he knows so well there, this would be like learning to kayak in a tsunami. It's just a very tough remit to ask of the guy.
They're bringing the American who led The Wall Street Journal to do that through the election, and then they're taking this third newsroom, which... I don't know if either of you have ever set things up quite this way. I think the most-- No.
Lionel: No.
David: I see you laughing there, fella. Lionel, not so much, is what you're saying.
Lionel: Not so much. I did take over in difficult circumstances in 2005, but on the other hand, I'd worked at the Financial Times for 20 years. I wasn't a skin graft like this is, and what is extraordinary to me is that you would replace the editor in the middle of the most important election in, name your time, four decades. It's quite extraordinary. Let me ask a parochial question. How do you feel about another Brit taking over one of the top news organizations that have-- You've got Emma Tucker at The Journal, admittedly a news international insider, John Micklethwait at Bloomberg, and then Mark Thompson at CNN.
David: Mark at least managed to launder himself off as an incredibly successful leader of the New York City Times, right? I feel as though he's got to know America, and he's in it to do American journalism. Here we have Will Lewis. To be fair to Will, he was at The Wall Street Journal under Rupert and Robert Thompson and so has experienced America, but he seems to be pulling people in whom he knew. He elevated Matt Murray to be editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal.
Rob Winnett was his guy. He came to him, as I understand it, with the database, essentially say, "Hey, for £110,000, fella, we can really break a hell of a lot of news here." A lot of newspapers, I think, including yours, Alan, although I'm not certain, but a lot of newspapers said-- The Times of London said [crosstalk]
Alan: No, we were never offered it.
David: You were never offered it, but a couple newspapers over there were--
Alan: We couldn't have afforded it, but we weren't offered it.
David: Right. Different issue, particularly.
Lionel: We couldn't have afforded it, and we wouldn't have done it anyway.
David: Right. Well, see, in the States, The New York Times, The Washington Post, my news organization would not consider paying a source for money. There's the ethical impropriety of it by our lights, and there's also the notion that you are incentivizing people to make stuff up and to perhaps lead you astray by [unintelligible 00:14:42] They did get a great scoop, and it is worth knowing the stuff that we learned, but it violates all kinds of ethical canons on this side of the Atlantic. This is who he's bringing in the day after the election to run The Washington Post.
There was a very contentious staff meeting this morning that I was able to gain full knowledge of, and his name was barely mentioned. What you have is this interim editor-in-chief, and then Matt will be going off, we can talk about this in a moment, to look at the future and trying to fix some of the problems of The Post.
Lionel: This is the question, is how as editor, and we all know as editor you need to bring the newsroom with you. I remember Hal Raines telling me we need to change the metabolism in The New York Times. It didn't end so well. Obviously, change is difficult, but can we just talk about this third newsroom? What's going on here?
David: As I understand it, this was initially floated to Sally Buzbee, who was just pushed out as editor and said, "Well, why don't you take over this third newsroom?" Part of the idea is that The Post has to play in different vineyards that it has. This was not his term, this was a reporter this morning, paraphrased Will Lewis as saying this, but effectively that The Post missed the boat on social media and has to find ways to play there that their audience has been halved and that they have to find people where there are.
Matt Murray is going to oversee a newsroom that looks at that and look at different ways to do it. For example, not just text, video and audio, and other ways. Not that The Post hasn't been doing this, but that this is going to be part of his remit. He's also going to oversee these teams that were built up, at some real expense for The Post, in the areas of climate and the areas of wellness. They're going to look for ways to sell either additional or smaller subscriptions that may be based on these areas. They're going to look also at this notion of micro subscriptions, which you guys have been thinking about for years.
I've had people come to Midtown New York and sit with me in Bryant Park time after time, saying, "I'm from the Netherlands," "I'm from Denmark," "I'm from Japan," "I've got these micropayments, it's really going to be the thing." I've got to tell you, it was really never the thing. Maybe it will work. I'm in favor of everything working. I want there to be money for journalism, pretty much for everybody, but I'm not sold on the idea that article-by-article or week-by-week subscriptions are going to do it. It may be that there can be a narrowing and people saying, "I just want coverage of Washington Sports." "I just want coverage of Wellness," which could well be something where that transcends geography.
If you do enough good reporting on it, that's the same from a lot of people in Glasgow as it might be in Galveston, Texas, right? There are just ways in which you could make that theoretical case, but Matt has a pretty tough remit. Let me say at The Wall Street Journal, from the people I've talked to there, he was highly regarded, well respected, thought of as overseeing some good innovations, but also nimble rather than radical, and somebody who actually tussled with Will Lewis' replacement at The Journal, the subsequent and current publisher at The Journal, over whether more radical changes were needed to meet the digital moment.
The Journal, by the way, is in great financial shape, as it turns out. The Post, as Lewis told his staff a few weeks ago, lost $77 million last year for owner Jeff Bezos, and they laid off about 13% of their staff last year.
Lionel: David, just going back, looking at context here, you talked about missing the boat or quoting people saying we missed the boat here, but if you think about it, 25 years ago, arguably The Post missed the internet boat, the digital boat there, and you saw first Politico and then Axios. They missed that round of innovation. Now it seems they're being accused of missing the next phase, the AI social media phase.
David: I think there's some truth to that. To be honest, I was a reporter at the rival, Baltimore Sun, in the '90s, and we looked down interstate 95 with some admiration as Don Graham and his family was spending $60 million to $70 million on washingtonpost.com, which by current lights, would look very rudimentary, but at the time, had a wealth of content that wasn't being offered in the newspaper, was much more daring, was visually interesting, and was trying stuff, and losing a ton of money doing it, but really trying stuff. I do think that Politico ate their lunch, and then Axios came and ate some of dinner.
Then now you have Punchbowl at D.C., which is perhaps eating breakfast, and that's three meals a day. That's taking away a lot of their food. It's a lot of protein being missed there. I think that Lewis is acknowledging that. He said several times at today's meeting, and we're speaking now on Monday. He said, "I can't sugarcoat this anymore." I do think there are ways in which, both through blogging and real-time updates and insider kind of news, Politico works in part because it has what's called Politico Pro, which is invisible to the likes of me without the money to pay for it, but essentially. provides lobbyists and corporate chieftains and PR people with astonishingly rich and detailed stuff that you're only seeing a tiny slice of in public view.
The Post intends to go after that as well, but Bloomberg has a cast of thousands doing this stuff. Politico Pro now has many hundreds of people and The Post is, I think, jogging to catch up on this. It's going to be a tough go.
Lionel: David, we know about sensitivities in the newsroom regarding things like diversity. Has it gone down three, white, middle-aged men now running The Post, or is that not an issue?
David: I could do you one better. A reporter there said to Will Lewis, "You spoke very movingly about diversity when you were named here last fall, late last fall, and yet today I noticed that we have now three newsrooms, and that's including the opinion section, being led by four white men." That would be Will Lewis, David Shipley, who is the editor of the editorial pages, Matt Murray, and Rob Winnett.
The real, in some ways, questions were explicitly couched as a culture question, like do people get federal politics being our bread and butter? Do people get The Washington Post itself for all its troubles? A very proud and storied institution. A vital one to the workings of American democracy, if we don't want to be too self-important about it. Also, you're hiring your buddies. Without any notion that these jobs were open for any application, did they consider anybody else internally? Not clear. Did they interview anybody of color? My reporting suggests actually at least in one case, that they reached out to Kevin Merida, who had been a likely candidate for it but went out west to run the LA Times for a little while. He would be a good person to recruit back. The idea is that Will Lewis is making his mark but he's also putting his own men in place, his people.
Alan: When Jeff Zucker was making a play for The Daily Telegraph, he obviously thought there was a Daily Telegraph-shaped hole in the American market for something that was more opinionated, had less regard for the boundaries of church and state, i.e. more British. We've spoken to people who know Rob Winnett and say that he's a very straight news guy, but do you think Will Lewis buys a opportunity to have-- that America wants something that could be more opinionated and less straight down the line than The Washington Post, New York Times?
David: I have not spoken to him directly about this, but he may well see The Post as not hewing perfectly to the straight line. Robert Thompson, Rupert Murdochs of the world brought in Jerry Baker because they didn't think that The Journal was sufficiently centrist or centrist right. Another Brit, and I would argue another graph that didn't take. I think the host body rejected it.
You saw that in staff meetings and leaks and other things where at one point Baker said, ultimately in a somewhat contentious meeting, about the fundamental question at the moment, which was covering the Trump administration and covering Donald Trump. He said, "If you don't like the way we approach it, you can walk across the street," where I know one guy, I was able to break the-- one guy, Devlin Barrett, I believe his name is, went across the street, called Marty Baron, got hired to The Washington Post and been breaking stories since. Will Lewis, it strikes me--
One of the real questions is, does he view himself as a Zucker-like figure? Where Zucker was the chief executive, president, I think he had the title of, but he also basically helped run the news meetings, and that's a very broadcast forward way of doing it. I've done some reporting of one of his deputies who actually had a career independent of Zucker for many years prior to being the number two at CNN. He's now running The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He sits in on a lot of those editorial meetings too. That's not typically the way American publishers operate. There's usually, as Alan said, a church and state kind of thing going on.
I don't think that the Brits, I'm talking to this panel of two of the most distinguished British journalists I've ever met, but nonetheless, I don't need to tell you, but for at least American listeners and for some of your listeners as well, that's not tradition in Britain. It's a hand in glove, seamless, arms linked kind of thing going on. Maybe sometimes they're more hands-off, but it's a delegation thing as opposed to a separation thing.
Lionel: Do you think that there is a gap in the center right piece of the market?
David: I think there is a perception among many that the reaction to a series of major developments in American society and politics, you take the Trump election, you take the Me Too movement, you take George Floyd, and then you take the isolation of COVID, and taken together, a number of folks and this is played out at my shop. Let me not be precious about this. At NPR, there are accusations of this, that somehow news organizations have gotten too woke, have gotten too progressive or somehow beating their chests and rending their garments over things as opposed to covering it straight.
You've seen some efforts at The New York Times to offer explicitly, Joe Khan has talked about wanting to offer corrective to that. I think that's the moment that Zucker thinks or thought that he was going to be able to play with. I think Will Lewis-- It's hilarious to me, but I've seen people accusing Sally Buzbee and say, "Well, she took The Washington Post woke and leftist just like she took the Associated Press."
Well, people can argue about the Associated Press coverage in this story or that story, whatever, but the Associated Press in the US is seen as the most anodyne kind of down the middle, straight ahead journalism possible. For her to be accused of wokeism there, of somehow tilting the balance to the left for the AP, strikes me that that's a reflection on the time and the moment that we're in. I do think that there is a perception of this.
I think there probably does need to be a bit of a corrective to those really, what shall I say? Percussive developments that changed the way a lot of journalists, particularly young journalists, but not only them, thought about covering issues. I'm sure that Will Lewis sees himself as casting The Post forward in a different way.
Alan: David, it's been an honor to have you on the show. We'll see how this skin graft takes and maybe we'll meet in six months and take the temperature. Thank you for joining us today.
David: I appreciate the assignment. Take care.
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Lionel: This is Media Confidential from Prospect Magazine. After the break, we'll have more on the major changes underway at The Washington Post. We'll be right back.
Alan: In this week's Prospect podcast, Alona Ferber, senior editor at Prospect Magazine, talks to Rafael Behr. Rafael is a Guardian journalist, an author of Politics: A Survivor's Guide, and he's written the lead piece in this month's Prospect Magazine, which looks at the British election and asks really how serious it is. He treats it almost as a Punch and Judy show and he asks about the way that politics act and why they can't be more serious and what all this means for democracy.
Rafael Behr: There are two structural things that make this contest particularly removed from some of the hard conversations we ought to have. I'm sure everyone listening to this knows what one of them is going to be and it starts with the letter B and I'll come onto that one. Before we come onto that one, there is this issue that, it's a change election, 14 years of conservative incumbency, all the Labour Party really has to do is galvanize enough get the Tories out energy to get themselves over the line with a majority, feed into that, the neurosis that the Labour Party has about throwing away advantages, losing elections, they're still seared into Labour's heart, memory of 1992 and the idea that they can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, makes Labour incredibly anxious and neurotic about doing anything to upset the advantages they've got.
You've got a hyper-cautious Labour Party just waiting for the Tories to finish imploding, and that in itself sets a very stultifying air over the whole thing. Feed into that, you've got the party that made it happen, unwilling to make it part of the legacy they're trying to defend because it's not popular anymore, and because Labour, through the electoral system and for other reasons, the routes that Keir Starmer has to map across the electoral system to Downing Street, because that takes him through areas where lots of people voted to leave the EU, he also can't say, "I think we can all agree now that was a total disaster."
Alan: Follow the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This is my weekly plea to take out a subscription to Prospect. Prospect is a place for long-form writing and reading. It's a place where we can examine where stories come from and where they're going. We allow writers a bit more freedom and a bit more depth to explore their subjects. Often you get surprising results from stepping away from the immediate news agenda and trying to take a deeper dive into the news.
Everything is rigorously fact-checked. It goes through about four edits here at Prospect. It's totally independent in all its analysis and perspectives. If you want to take out a subscription, there's no commitment and you can cancel at any time. All you have to do is to visit our website, go to your favorite search engine and search for "Prospect Magazine subscription."
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Lionel: Welcome back to Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and me, Lionel Barber.
Alan: Replacing Sally Buzbee as "interim editor" is Matt Murray, who was the editor-in-chief at The Wall Street Journal, and he himself is-- [laughs] It's difficult to say this with a straight face, but do try and keep up. Who will eventually be replaced by Robert Winnett, straight after the US election in November, presumably because Winnett is new to the US and you can't plunge a Brit straight into covering an election in the middle of it. Anyway, he's been at The Telegraph for 17 years, where his last role was deputy editor.
Lionel: What will Robert Winnett bring to the position of being an executive editor at The Washington Post? How will his departure from The Telegraph at such a key moment in the midst of the UK general election campaign, where will that lead The Telegraph and to take over another key moment, the middle of the US presidential election, that's going to be a tough ask.
This is all going to happen at a moment when both Will Lewis and Robert Winnett need to tackle some serious problems at the loss-making Washington Post. To find out how we think they're going to fare, we have Peter Foster, who's the public policy editor at The Financial Times. He knows Robert Winnett very well. Peter, you worked with Robert. What can you tell us about him?
Peter Foster: I think the first thing I can tell you about him is that he's a newsman. Robert or Rob, actually, as he is generally known, is a man who's got hard news skills. He used to be the political editor of The Telegraph. I've been in the trenches with him filing from Washington, D.C. 800 words splashes with half an hour to go. He's a guy who's done it. He actually has a very strong news sense. He masterminded the delivery of The Telegraph's expenses scandal. That was this cash of expenses claims by MPs, British members of Parliament, which was leaked and bought in the end by The Daily Telegraph.
Just produced this incredible treasure trove of stories day after day after day about MPs indenting for new duck houses. It was a huge story in the UK, and I'm not actually sure it was a brilliant story for the UK because it created a further culture of dissatisfaction with MPs. I think it would be hard to fault the craft with which The Telegraph handled the material, with which it was packaged and parceled out, and it was a massive undertaking.
Competitors say it was checkbook journalism, it was handed to them on a plate. I don't think that's right at all. There was a room full of journalists doing really hard graft, combing through the data, finding the lines that were going to fly, and then standing them up, as you say, in a way that didn't get them sued. I suspect that what Will Lewis wants Rob Winnett to do is to bring some of that muscle tissue, some of that smarts into the newsroom.
I worked much more closely at length with Rob all through the Brexit process when I was working for a non-remain, a pro-Brexit newspaper, turning out stories, with Rob, that were hard-hitting, that made a load of waves and that frequently weren't part of the policy agenda. I'd cite that as example of where Rob is a proper, without fear or favor, journalist. He's a guy who wants to bring really hard-hitting stories and land them in a way that makes an impact. I would guess, I don't know, but I would guess that's what's the thinking behind his appointment.
Alan: You know American journalism, you know what The Washington Post has been. Do you think when you compare the tone of The Telegraph and then compare The Washington Post, what kind of surprises are the staff and readers of The Washington Post in for?
Peter: You know what, Alan, I would be amazed if Rob Winnett's brief is to turn The Washington Post into The Daily Telegraph, which as you rightly say, has been buffeted by British culture wars, the vintages are very mixed. When I was there, I was there till 2020, one of my colleagues, Josie Ensor, won the Marie Colvin Award for foreign corresponding. If you read some of the stuff that was written by another former colleague of mine, Roland Oliphant from Ukraine, a brilliant Russian-speaking journalist, I would say that journalism would absolutely be welcome in The Washington Post. I'd be amazed if Rob's brief is to turn The Washington Post into The Daily Telegraph.
He's a craftsman, and he will apply those skills in the right context, in the right way to what The Post is and what The Post needs to be if it's going to become commercially successful again. The other thing I would say is that for all the unevenness of The Telegraph, if you look at the website and you look at some of the methods, some of their digital stuff is really quite clever and smartly produced. Aside from whether the content is even or not, but they're very different beasts. I would expect that Rob Winnett will bring a bunch of skills, new skills that would apply in The Washington Post as they would anywhere else.
Alan: My second question was, you are the outstanding example of being given your head. You were not in favor of Brexit, the paper was, but in general, there is not the division between opinion and news that you would find on an American newspaper. The Telegraph isn't a validly right-wing paper. Can you just talk about, again, whether he can make that separation or whether perhaps Will wants to bring in something more of the opinionated style of British journalism into the American market?
Peter: That's a very good question to which I honestly don't know the answer. I don't know what Will Lewis' battle plan is. I do think, actually, if you look at where Rob Winnett comes from, he's been around long enough to remember in a pre-culture war world, where there was more separation between church and state. Perhaps not quite American level of separation between comment and news, but it definitely has bled one into the other, loosely the cultural war area, the post-Brexit area, in a way then when I was starting in the mid '90s when Rob Winnett was starting, it wasn't, and I actually don't think that will be a problem for Rob.
As I said, I don't know if that's the plan. If it is the plan, I'm not sure it's a very good plan in an American context, but that's the decision way above my pay grade. I suspect if that was the plan, I'm not sure you'd hire Rob Winnett to do that. Most people, with great respect to Rob, don't know who he is. He's not a red braces-wearing type newspaper editor. He's somebody who understands the news. I think the bad bits of British journalism give British journalism a bad name.
Lionel: I have some bad news for you. You are talking to Alan Rusbridger, who's never been seen in Red Braces.
[laughter]
Peter: Don't you both have red braces somewhere?
Lionel: I definitely have a pair, but you knew that.
Peter: You know what I mean. If that was the plan, I'm not sure you'd hire Rob Winnett to do that.
Lionel: Well, let's talk about Will Lewis, because you know him. I knew him when he was news editor at The Financial Times. You knew him when he took over as editor at The Telegraph to replace a sitting editor, Sally Buzbee, won several Pulitzer Prizes in the middle of probably the biggest election campaign since, well, name your date, 1980 maybe, Reagan-Carter, whatever. That's a very big call. Knowing him and what he's like, what do you think, what's the plan?
Peter: [laughs] I've just said I didn't know what the plan was and now you've asked me what the plan is. I feel like I'm back in the morning conference. Listen, it is a big statement and I think it's probably a statement that there needs to be change. British journalist colleagues of mine who've gone across to American papers have found them unbelievably process-driven, frustratingly slow, overlaid and with too many people stroking their chins. I suspect that there is a happy medium here.
I suspect that I probably work for it in The Financial Times, which has the same standards of rigor that you would get in an American newspaper, the same adherence to the data, and to double sourcing material, but also doesn't have a committee of wise men and women sitting above every story. If there's a culture clash, I imagine that's where it will come.
Lionel: I think it, in fairness, Peter and Alan, when Emma Tucker first arrived at The Wall Street Journal, I know very well that she too was struck by the sheer number of people in the organization and was raising some questions about productivity, output, what were they doing? She's made a number of changes too, but to, as I say, move an editor in the middle of a campaign, bringing in another British per editor is a big deal.
Peter: I wouldn't dispute that for a second. I can tell you, from long experience, Rob Winnett likes a strong, well-sourced story, and that is journalism, whichever side of the Atlantic you are on.
Alan: Thanks so much for joining us, Peter. That's really useful background on somebody who, as you say, has lived in the shadows and is now going to have to get used to blinking in the light of scrutiny.
Lionel: Peter, thank you so much. I just want you to know also that you never saw me stroking my chin in news conference.
Peter: [laughs] Thanks, gents.
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Lionel: Alan, looking at this story, I come down to not just process, the rapid ousting of Sally Buzbee, just losing your job overnight without any forewarning, to the timing. What was it that triggered this position? We know that Will Lewis had set out something of a new strategy, the different newsrooms, wanting to develop different audiences, but what was the trigger, and what's in his mind? I have to say, Alan, I think that looking at the way the election is unfolding, thinking that if Trump's going to win, maybe you do need to reposition the post somewhat. Nevermind the editorial commercial strategy.
Alan: It's a riddle wrapped in an enigma or whatever the Churchillian phrase was. First of all, we need to think about the bigger picture, Bezos, Jeff Bezos, this is sort of loose change down the back of his sofa. He bought The Post under the previous editor, Marty Baron. He went for a very ambitious expansion. It was a terrific mood at the paper. Now Jeff Bezos is losing, what, $70 million a year? He's decided that's too much. Of course he could afford it if he wanted to, but he's decided--
Lionel: He's worth more than a 100 billion.
Alan: To use a Fleet Street term, it's reverse ferret time, and suddenly it's all austerity and they're laying people off. Will Lewis apparently, at this crisis meeting, was very somber about the problems that The Post faced. By all accounts, it was a steamy meeting. There was a culture clash between the rather breezy buccaneering Lewis and the rather serious Washington Post staff. They didn't like the look of the way that this was done.
It looked like Will was just bringing in his old chums. There's a diversity issue that there are now four editors, they're all white males. People made the not-unreasonable point that if there had been some hiring process in which people could apply for this job, that things might have worked out differently. I suppose relevance to that is bringing in Robert Winnett, who from Pete Foster's description, is a very straight guy.
Nevertheless, he comes from a British tradition of newspapering, which is much more polemic, opinionated than papers like The Washington Post and New York Times have historically been. My question is whether this is deliberate, whether Lewis thinks that America actually wants a bit of that kind of journalism. It certainly worked with Fox News and the broadcasting space. Is it ready for a newspaper to be a bit more politically opinionated? If that is his attention, how are they going to bring the staff with them? Because I think it's very alien to American newsroom idea of what newspapers should be.
Lionel: Well, Alan, I think that you're raising all the right questions, but in fairness to Lewis, he said there are three newsrooms, one's the general news newsroom that you and I know, the second, and this is different from the British model, is the Op-Ed, the comment section, the opinion writers, that's a second newsroom. Then there's this third one that we're going to find out a little bit more about, which is looking at new readers, trying to develop coverage in the area of health and other things that will appeal to a different audience. He's keeping these separate.
When we talk about comment, I'm not absolutely sure that you are going to see a blurring as happens in Britain. The other point is that, and which I think is a more serious problem, is that Robert Winnett doesn't have any serious experience in America. He really does look like a implant. I get that if you are losing a lot of money, you don't think that it's particularly productive. High productivity newsroom. You got people, a lot of people, a lot of editing, a lot of layers, a lot of costs built up, including under Martin Baron, it has to be said, that that is ripe for change. You can bring in somebody from outside, but somebody who has no background in American journalism, I think is going to be a tough ask.
Alan: What do you think lies behind this invasion of Brits? You've got Joanna Coles at The Beast, you've got Mark Thompson at CNN?
Lionel: Emma Tucker at The Wall Street Journal.
Alan: Bloomberg.
Lionel: John, Micklethwait, ex-economist editor.
Alan: Is it just a coincidence or do you think Americans look over the pond and think there's something about British journalism that they find attractive?
Lionel: Well, I think that American journalism has some tremendous strengths. We have to remember that newspapers for a long time were de facto monopolies. There were two newspaper cities that were then turning into one newspaper.
There's a bit of, yes, competition from radio, but for a long time, they didn't actually adapt fast enough. After the internet, in reaction to Fox News and Cable News, they were very conservative. They're incredibly conservative, also even on design. I think that in Britain, and Andrew Neil, by the way, is very interesting on this. Because I actually wrote a piece about 30 years on in 2008, for what it's worth, about spending my time at The Washington Post and comparing the coverage and the way that things are organized in Britain and the UK. I think it's fair to say that they have been very slightly resistant to change, slow to adapt.
Britain, which has always had a very competitive news business and news market has therefore produced editors who are a bit more adaptable. By the way, also, who've been involved, and I speak for myself, and I think you were also at The Guardian, who did get involved in general terms in the commercial side of the strategy. We were not monks in cells. As a result, I think that ability to adapt, that ability to innovate, having a commercial nose, all these things, make British editors attractive when tackling the problems of a little bit staid, if sometimes strong, news businesses in America.
Alan: The final thing from me, Lionel, is this idea of a third newsroom, which is really hiving off the entrepreneurial and digital bits to a different newsroom, which seems to really come full circle. I remember going to The Washington Post in the very early days of the internet where they had set up their internet division across the river in a different state because they wanted to shield them from all the union laws that applied in the District of Columbia. Over the last 15 years, there has been a trend towards consolidation. You don't have separate newsrooms, you have one newsroom.
This breaking out into a different newsroom reminds me of a different project, and you'll know where this is leading, Lionel, a very impatient young editor who was keen to make his mark in the world, set up a different newsroom north of his present newsroom. Do you see where this is going? North of the Houston Road. I've given it away. This was the so-called Houston Project that the editor of The Daily Telegraph, Will Lewis, set up and it was supposed to be a separate project from the newsroom and it was going to be all singing, all dancing, and have a much more nimble and commercial feel to it. It lasted about nine months before Murdoch MacLennan, the then-CEO of The Telegraph pulled the plug on it.
It feels to me as though this is unfinished business for Will. He thought that was a good idea at the time and wants to try it out again, but it's not the first time he's been on this particular dance floor.
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Lionel: That's all from Media Confidential. Thank you to David Folkenflik and Peter Foster for joining us. We'll be back next week with more news from Behind the Headlines.
Alan: Also, next week we'll be exploring what that newsroom that Will Lewis is planning for The Washington Post will look like. We'll be talking to Ramin Beheshti, the CEO of the News Movement, a media organization aimed at 18 to 35-year-olds where coincidentally Will Lewis was until recently working.
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Alan: Lionel, you enjoy your trip and come back and tell us all about Trump America when you get back next week. Meanwhile, send us any questions or comments to Media Confidential, all one word, @prospectmagazine.co.uk or get in touch on X formerly Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod, and remember to follow Media Confidential wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer today is Martin Poyntz-Roberts.
