This week Alan and Lionel follow the latest twists and turns at the Washington Post. The noisy departure of Sally Buzbee, the paper’s former executive editor, continues to reverberate around the media world, following Buzbee’s bust-up with Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and chief executive, over an article that she approved about a phone hacking lawsuit connected to Lewis.
Lewis was mentioned in Prospect reporting that broke new revelations about the phone hacking scandal—but it was only when drama ensued at the Post, one of the great American media institutions, that the story began to make headlines. On this week’s episode, editor-in-chief of Semafor, Ben Smith, explains how the US publishing industry reacts when under fire.
Meanwhile Joanna Coles of the Daily Beast, another of the British journalists staking her claim in the United States, discusses whether British or American journalists are more used to newsroom showdowns. With all eyes on the Post, what will the ultimate fallout be?
The transcript below 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 world of the media with me, Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber: And me, Lionel Barber. We're going to dive straight away into the big story at The Washington Post and the top level management changes there led by William Lewis, formerly of The Telegraph. Lots happened since we talked about Sally Busby stepping down from her role as executive editor last week. I think there's a little more to her departure than we first thought here.
Alan: Well, it blossomed into quite a big story in America since our last podcast, especially the revelations that Buzbee, the outgoing editor and Will Lewis, the new CEO, clashed over an article that Sally Busby wanted to run about Lewis' involvement in a phone hacking scandal, which, as you know, was first run by Prospect magazine. We talked about it on this podcast with the incredible work by Nick Davies.
Lionel: Yes. Sally Busby was advised that it would be a bad judgment to run the article. She wasn't banned, but was certainly lent on. She ran the article anyway, and it included the following sentence. The judge also cleared the way for plaintiffs to air allegations that current and former executives below Rupert Murdoch carried out an effort to conceal evidence related to the phone hacking, including William Lewis, now the publisher and CEO of The Washington Post.
Alan: In the normal run of events in American journalism, the separation of powers between publisher and editor, there would almost be an element of pride in an editor being able to write about their own newspaper. Will Lewis saw things differently. I think that made her very difficult. Today, we're going to be joined by two guests who have been following this story, and who are both supremely qualified to comment on it. One is Ben Smith, who before taking his current role as Editor-in-Chief of Semafor was the chief media commentator for The New York Times, and obviously before that Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed.
He recently interviewed Will Lewis for his On The Record series in January. We're also joined by Joanna Coles, who is now at The Daily Beast. She's one of the so called redcoats we talked about last week, ex-Guardian, ex-Times, who has had many distinguished roles in American journalism. Rather than saying that the Brits are coming, she says they're already there because of her role along with people like Mark Thompson and Emma Tucker at the Wall Street Journal and at Bloomberg.
First of all, Lionel, I find it very difficult to, I need a plane tracker to keep track of where you are. You've just come back from New York, but you're already in Switzerland. No, not Switzerland, Sweden. Where are you?
Lionel: I'm in Stockholm, Alan, about to attend the Brilliant Mind conference. I don't know whether I'm a brilliant mind, but certainly there'll be a few top tech people here. It's sponsored by, led by Spotify, Daniel Ek, the founder. I think I'll have a good time. I was, yes, in Washington and New York last week. I was attending a memorial service for Gustavo Cisneros, the Venezuelan. Great media character, by the way. He founded Univision, which is the most incredibly successful Hispanic TV channel in North America.
A great businessman in his own right. Then I popped down to Washington to do a little bit of snooping, Alan. I was in a suit and tie, you'll be surprised to hear. A few people thought that I was canvassing for the top job at The Washington Post. Well, I'm a Brit.
Alan: We'll discuss that when we come to discuss The Washington Post. Meanwhile, you're missing the gripping election that we've got here. I was caught this morning by a piece of research from John Curtis, the highly respected academic who keeps his eye on everything to do with psephology. It was about the complete collapse of trust in politics that's happened. He's never seen anything like it, the levels of collapse of trust since 2019. The great unmentionable figures on Brexit, not allowed to discuss Brexit during this campaign.
According to Curtis, the average level of support for rejoining the EU now is about 58%. People just 24% now say that Britain should be outside the EU. Then they look at what people think about the economy, 71% think the economy is worse off as a result of Brexit. People who thought in 2019, one in 10 thought immigration would increase in the wake of leaving the EU. Now about half think this has been the consequence. These are really startling shifts in position on the thing that won the Tories the last election, the promise to get this done. It's quite remarkable how this has not been discussed at all.
You would think that all the papers who went so over the top in supporting Brexit now appear to be completely out of touch with these gigantic swings in polling. You think that's going to have a consequence on trusted journalism?
Lionel: Well, well, Alan, there is a principle here of a murder that the papers don't want to talk about Brexit, but nor does Labour with its huge lead. They don't want to talk about Brexit. They don't want to talk about the really the relationship with the European Union. That's taboo too. I had a little bit of sympathy because yes, I did force myself to read Boris Johnson's column in the Daily Mail, where he essentially wrote an anti-Semitic slur almost calling Sir Keir Starmer, Sir Keir Schnorrer.
The point of his piece was to say, I wager that Labour's going to take you back into the single market. We're going to get closer to Europe, et cetera, et cetera. Sympathetic to what you're saying, Alan, but the politicians are also shying away.
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Lionel: Ben Smith is Editor-in-Chief at Semafor. He's, by the way, about to launch a new podcast at Semafor. Ben has been following the developments in The Washington Post story and joins us now.
Alan: We're very pleased to be joined now by Ben Smith, former Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed, now Editor-in-Chief of Semafor, who's been reporting on this and monitoring the story. Ben, do you sense this story has got legs or is it blowing itself out?
Ben Smith: It now has legs, for sure. It was a story that honestly, nobody in the United States cared about at all, until Will- I don't think he actually even really tried to shut it down, but expressed some displeasure that it was being reported in The Washington Post. That is what gave it legs.
Lionel: For British readers and listeners, explain what line was crossed when Will, as publisher, gently or not so gently, lent on Sally Buzbee not to use this story.
Ben: Yes. It's almost a ritual of American media, and it's really specifically of big prestige publications and specifically The New York Times and The Washington Post, that one of the ways they prove their journalistic independence is reporting on themselves. Reporting on their new bosses, actually, is a big part of that tradition. When Rupert Murdoch took over News Corp, or took over the Wall Street Journal, the journal did a deep investigative series on Rupert Murdoch, and it might've been a little uncomfortable, but they let the reporters do it.
When Mark Thompson took over The New York Times, it was in the wake of a- I don't even remember who these people are, but they have silly names and they were involved in some horrible British sex scandal. Mark Thompson had allegedly been involved in covering it up. That was the allegation, which I think was only an allegation. The New York Times did a very extensive piece of reporting on it, and Mark said "God bless. I'm in favor of reporting." It's a bit of a ritual of demonstrating independence.
Lionel: Yes. This is the Jimmy Savile sex affair. He was a great celebrity, BBC presenter, sexually abused dozens of people, young people. That's the story you're talking about, Ben, right?
Ben: Yes. Which I don't mean to make light of, it's just television celebrity is so national. You have no idea if these people are, one country to the next. Which, by the way, is true of newspaper celebrity and is a reason why nobody would ever have cared about this story in the United States, despite what a really genuinely important global story phone hacking was at the time.
Alan: The background of whether or not Will Lewis was complicit in destroying material and evidence, in a way, was secondary to the greater crime of them try to suppress the reporting of it.
Ben: Oh, beyond secondary. You've got to realize this is entirely about us, the Americans. Nobody cared at all about what Will had done or not done in phone hacking. I think if he had personally hacked people's phones, it might've been a two-day story, but the notion that he was involved in the corporate email retention arguments afterward was never going to be a story in the US. Corporate email retention is in fact a rolling cover up. That's the point. Every company does it. I think people here were like, he just did not at all, just no particular interest in that. When The Post wrote about it, nobody cared, by the way. When he really did cross a American newsroom tradition, it really did trigger an uproar in his newsroom.
Lionel: There's a grand irony here, of course, because Will certainly, when I knew him 25 years ago, was an investigative journalist, a scoop merchant, broke big stories. He delighted in uncovering malfeasance, ill-doing, all sorts of things, and now he's the victim.
Ben: Well, I think there's a different- the British and American traditions are so different, and I do think they misread each other a bit. There's a sense in the US that British journalists are unserious, in a way. That you don't consider yourselves warrior priests like us. I think Americans sometimes miss that British journalists have a lot of fun, do not necessarily have the same sense of themselves, but really do take on power and are very comfortable with real confrontations with power. Will always did that.
The idea that you're constantly proving your own virtue with theatrical confrontations with your own boss really is something is not as common in British journalism, I believe. Although you see some of it probably contagion from here.
Lionel: Well, let me ask you about the role of the proprietor, Jeff Bezos, a multi-multi-billionaire, was persuaded by Don Graham, the Graham family, to sell a newspaper to Bezos. He was deeply involved in the appointment of Marty Baron, a famous editor, as the first editor of the Bezos era. Do you think he was directly informed, consulted about what Will Lewis was doing, and do you think he did due diligence on Will Lewis?
Ben: He certainly had the resources to do due diligence. I have covered Will and know who he is, and there's a lot that he is missing from the American conversation. Like the fact that he was in the bunker with Boris and got these controversial honors from Boris. Again, I have written about it a bit, of no interest to Americans. Sorry. I don't know why, but that's the deal.
The question of where Bezos' head is right now is really the big mystery of The Post. Will has an audience of one, fundamentally. I would also be careful in describing what Lewis did. He was CEO of the newspaper, and so he could've prevented them from publishing it, and they published the stories. I do think that all that's been reported was that he grumbled about it basically. Which again, does cross those lines, but you can do worse.
Lionel: Ben as editor, if I was having a story written by reporters about the publisher or the CEO, I would certainly have gone just to, as a matter of courtesy, inform them. I wouldn't of course have expected the publisher then to say, well, you've got bad judgment, because that's what he did.
Ben: Would you have done a story about if your publisher was in trouble in another country in a complicated way that the FT would not otherwise cover, would you have gone out of your way to do that story?
Lionel: We would've had to cover it. Yes.
Ben: Right. But I don't think that's universally true in the British media, is it?
Lionel: Well, given The Telegraph and the Barclay Brothers and their various tax affairs, I would...
Ben: For instance, and I don't think the Murdoch press covers the Murdoch's particularly aggressively.
Lionel: Well, James Harding lost his job as a result of finally writing more in The Times about the Murdoch phone hacking, but I'll hand over to Alan.
Alan: Ben, you said the story has legs. Will has sent out a coded mea culpa, he's walked the floor with Patty Stonesifer, who was the interim publisher, and he asked for forgiveness and said we should all move on. Is that likely to happen?
Ben: No. Their biggest problem is that The New York Times, which when I was there, there was always a sense of can you write about The Washington Post? Do we consider it ourselves rivals? Has just decided that this story is delightful, that they're going to write about it every day, that they love it. I don't know this to be true, but I assume they have a great investigative team in London who I'm sure are now returning over all the rocks that you guys did in prospect. I think this will be a 1,000-part series in The New York Times.
Alan: Tell us about Bezos, because it was only a couple of years ago that when Marty Baron left The Times, did a huge law data piece about Bezos and The Post, he doubled the headcount. He was in it for the long term. Has he just got bored of publishing?
Ben: I would say two things. One is that I don't think he was. He did not-- I think there's a curse of being run by a billionaire, and the contrast between The Times and The Post really shows it, which is The Times was forced to find an audience and build a business and diversify. The Post knew a billionaire had its back, so it did a bunch of flashy tech projects that were aimed at pleasing Jeff Bezos and did not ultimately go anywhere, and mostly got shut down.
It didn't do anything other than high profile White House coverage that really built a sustainable audience. At some point the billionaire gets a little bored, looks over, and you're losing $80 million a year and is unhappy, and that's where they are. The probably the most crucial test of a publisher really is are you going to back your journalists when they threaten your interests?
He really did that and deserves massive credit for it, because Trump just made no secret of the fact that he considered The Post an irritant, that he blamed Bezos. Amazon believes that they lost this huge, huge, multi-billion dollar defense department contract specifically for that reason, and they said that in court. That was not a trivial contract. That was the backbone of the-- There was this central fight in the competition for the cloud. Biggest contract in the world. Amazon lost it to Microsoft. Amazon believes that was because of Trump's hostility to Bezos, and because Bezos wouldn't moderate The Post's coverage. Even for Jeff Bezos, that was a big risk, and he took it and he stood by his people.
I do think there is a question of whether this Jeff Bezos, who is much more interested in Hollywood, very interested in his new partner, Lauren Sanchez, spends a lot of time getting photographed on his yacht. Seems to have worked a lot on his physique. Occasionally tweets reactionary stuff about all the how annoying the woke kids are these days. He is in a circle of West Coast billionaires who are Trump-curious, Trump-friendly these days. I don't know. Is this guy up for another round? I don't know. These are questions that's between him and Will Lewis.
Lionel: Ben, you were a very hard-hitting chief media reporter at The New York Times. You wrote a column. Would you say that The Washington Post is actually gone a bit woke? That's certainly what Marty Baron wrote in his memoir.
Ben: I don't think I would ever use the phrase "Gone a bit woke" in any context. Only British people can say that. I think it's complicated. I think there are every institution in the country had this social revolution in 2020, and Marty, I would say, handled it less adeptly than-- Great editor, but got into very toxic fights with some of his own people over social issues.
The question of, does he embrace of the progressive left? Yes, but also it really- his identity was defined by the conflict with Donald Trump. The question of where does it stand vis-à-vis national politics is interesting and confusing. Will Lewis does not come out of the democracy, dies in darkness tradition of journalism. He comes out, but although- which isn't to say he isn't comfortable confronting power.
Lionel: Ben, let me ask you one other question regarding the appointment of Rob Winnett, another Brit outsider. How much focus do you think there's going to be on what he actually has done, his journalistic record? There's one or two questions there, even though Will was very clear that he was "World class."
Ben: Well, tell me more. I'm interested.
Alan: Well, The Guardian published something based on Nick Davis' book Flat Earth News that Rob Winnett was our reporter on The Sunday Times using material from a 23-year-old who was working as a typist in Whitehall. She was a very enterprising journalism graduate, who for months was providing The Sunday Times with amazing range of scoops. Eventually the police worked out that this young woman had got a job as a typist and was just feeding The Sunday Times copies of the stuff that she was typing up in the Whitehall typing pool. Is that the kind of thing that an American...
Ben: Wait, that sounds great. What's the problem?
Alan: [laughs]
Ben: No, seriously. What's the problem?
Alan: In the end, it was so embarrassing all around The Sunday Times.
Ben: It's bad when your sources get caught, but I love a good confidential source.
Alan: The question which was never answered was whether they had encouraged this young woman to apply for a job to go into the heart of Whitehall, and we're paying her.
Ben: That's a different question. II do think that there are parts of British journalism where you go undercover, and where you pay people, and in the US we don't do that. I think most American journalists-- Well, I'll speak for myself. I do think that's a really big cultural differences in the journalism, and there are these questions of ethics where you have the law and we don't really have any laws, so we have ethics. I think that-- At least, I'll speak for myself. These guys came up in a tradition where you pay sources. I don't do it, but I don't cast dispersions, but you can't do it at The Washington Post. I don't think people are going to be upset about that, honestly.
I think, in American journalism, Jack Anderson, the great scoopmonger of the '70s in the US, had a source, I believe it was a naval officer doing something similar in a very similar situation. I don't know. Those sound like great scoops to me.
Alan: Ben, to go back to what you were saying about, you were speculating about Bezos, and we're coming up to an immensely consequential election, and last time around, as you say, The Post and The New York Times, New Yorker, there was a handful of media organizations who really stood up when the heat was at its most intense. It sounds as though that could be different this time around.
Ben: I asked a Brit, who's in a senior position in American media, of whom there are a lot now, so I'm not identifying the source here, about this. "These Americans seem to think that their job is to stand up to and stop Donald Trump. You don't seem to think that's your job." This person said, "How'd that work out for you last time?" I do think there's certainly a different philosophy on that. Although again, I would say, I'm not sure that the record shows that the times, courage, and using the word liar to describe Donald Trump was consequential. There's a decent case to be made that it backfired.
Alan: I suppose the broader point is that there was an assault on institutions, and if we're to take Trump at his word, that says nothing to the assault on institutions that we're about to see, and the press is one of those institutions. If other institutions fail, we're going to need the press to be doubly robust.
Ben: Yes. I think this is a question for Jeff Bezos rather than Will Lewis, and we really don't know the answer.
Alan: All we can do is read the tea leaves at the moment.
Ben: All that we can do is read the tea leaves scattered around the deck of his yacht.
Alan: Ben, thanks so much for joining us.
Ben: It's great to see you both.
Lionel: Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
Alan: This is Media Confidential from Prospect magazine, and after the break, we'll have more on the major change is underway at The Washington Post. We'll be right back.
Alan: In this week's prospect podcast, assistant editor Emily Lawford talks to Phil Collins, a former number 10 speechwriter, and now contributing editor's prospect about the release of the Conservative Party Manifesto.
Phil Collins: I think it's very unlikely that the publication of a manifesto can really do much to reverse the Tory fortunes because they're so deeply embedded. I strongly suspect that we've had a glimpse of some of the themes that will be made concrete today. Particularly the attack on the Labour Party on tax.
Maybe, I suppose, there could be some major revelation about a tax cut that might move things. It has happened before. George Osborne, back in 2007, stopped Gordon Brown having an election by making an announcement on his plans for inheritance tax. I wouldn't say it's inconceivable that something material could happen, but I think they're in such a bad way in the country and in the way we look at them, that I think it's unlikely at this point that any major tax promise would be believed.
Alan: Follow the Prospect Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're enjoying Media Confidential, and you're enjoying these pieces in Prospect, please take out a digital subscription. You can get, at the moment, a one-month free trial to our digital content and you will enter a world of rigorously fact-checked, truly independent analysis, and perspectives. We're not taking part in the culture wars. We're not part of a polarized media that we talk about in the US and to some extent in Britain. We're totally independent. There's no commitment. You can cancel any time. Just go to our website, go to your favorite search engine, and search for Prospect Magazine Subscription.
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Alan: "We are the ultimate trophies for American billionaires." That's Joanna Coles talking to The New York Times, describing the US fascination with British editors and journalists. Joanna became editor of The Daily Beast, an online news service actually founded by another Brit, Tina Brown, named after a newspaper in the famous Evelyn Waugh novel about journalism, Scoop. She's even installed a Scot as her Editor-in-Chief and a Guardian reporter as Washington bureau chief.
Lionel: Welcome, Joanna. You have a unique perspective on this story of British journalists taking over the commanding heights of American media. How much do you think the backlash against Will Lewis is cultural and how much is it actually because he wants to effect change at an institution, The Washington Post, which is in some serious financial trouble?
Joanna Coles: Hi, Lionel. I should say with all conflicts of interest, I used to work for Alan which was some of my happiest days in journalism. I had great fun at The Guardian. It's a great question and I think that I feel the sense of Will Lewis' challenge. This is a very difficult time for journalism. He's walked into an institution which says it's losing 77 million. I suspect that that's probably a conservative estimate. I would expect he's probably looking at more costs than that. I'm sure or I would think that Jeff Bezos brought him in to break the business model of journalism, not to break the brand of The Washington Post and not to break the honor of American journalism.
It's really important to remember the extraordinary role that The Washington Post plays, not only actually in American journalism, but I think for all journalists impossible not to know about the Watergate story. For Will Lewis as well, he's stepping into the shoes of the legendary Katharine Graham, who stood behind her reporters against President Nixon with the Watergate story, and again with the Pentagon Papers.
This is not a regular publishing job. The Washington Post is not a regular paper, and Jeff Bezos is not a regular proprietor. Will, in any situation, would have his work cut out for him. He is, by all accounts, extremely able in thinking about business models for journalism. I met him for the first time this year, actually, at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and he's incredibly affable, very charming, clearly very bright, cares enormously about news. This story has really taken off.
Lionel: The story being, Joanna, just to be clear, Ben Smith talked about the cardinal error of a publisher, the publisher of The Washington Post, essentially leaning on the executive editor not to publish a story in which he was the prime character. Can you explain why this was so serious?
Joanna: Yes, and in fact, in The Beast, we had Paul Farhi, who was the legendary media writer at The Washington Post for 30 years actually, writing a very good piece for The Beast in which he outlined the problem for Will Lewis, who as we know is facing the real business challenges, but as the publisher to first try and suppress a story about himself and about what he did or didn't do for Murdoch.
Then secondly, to go after David Folkenflik, who's one of the most respected media reporters. He's at NPR here, which is the equivalent of the BBC in America. To go after David Folkenflik as an activist and not a reporter is very strange. Again, my point about-- This was the job that Katharine Graham had. This is not a regular publisher's job. These are legendary shoes that he's stepping into. This is not whopping.
Lionel: He needs to read her memoir.
Joanna: He needs to read her memoir. He needs to read-- To be fair to Will, I'm sure he has, and I'm sure he's read Marty Baron's book too, which is an excellent account. He obviously was the previous editor to Sally Buzbee, an excellent editor, the subject of the movie Spotlight, again, another very romantic movie about journalism and an important movie about journalism and the power of journalism. Will claims that he knows the line. He understands the line, but trying to suppress a story and then going after a really respected journalist claiming he's an activist is not really observing the line. The backlash from his own reporters is going to be something he's going to have to manage through
Lionel: Joanna, that's one element of the story. The other element is the alleged sins that he was accused of at the time of phone hacking. There's some slight ethical question mark over some of the things that the incoming editor Robert Winnett is alleged to have done. Do these alleged sins of the past add up to much in American eyes or is a major crime, this crossing of the line?
Joanna: The phone hacking scandal really has not had much attention in the US. It didn't happen here. People don't really understand why it's significant. When Will Lewis was interviewing for the job, it was really last November, the complaints of him overseeing the deletion of 30.7 million emails and the so-called eight missing filing cabinets, my understanding is that that complaint actually came out in January, February of this year. People have started paying attention to it in a way that they didn't when he was first chosen for the job. Obviously, Sally Buzbee leaving and accusing him of trying to suppress a story and saying that your judgment's off, this is not a story, is really what's brought it all into the spotlight.
Lionel: To be fair, Joanna, Sally Buzbee hasn't directly accused him. It's sources within The Washington Post.
Joanna: Okay. Fair enough, fair enough. I know our media reporter, Corbin Bolies, has been speaking to journalists at The Washington Post, all of whom are concerned about this.
Lionel: Do you think it's now blowing out or has it got the potential to keep growing?
Joanna: I think as yet the unknown element of this is what does the proprietor Jeff Bezos think about this? Again, this is, I think in Marty Baron's book, when Don Graham asked him if he was interested in buying The Washington Post. His initial reaction was no. I think he said, and I'm pretty sure this is in Marty's book, but he said, "No, why would I buy a media company if I wanted to start-- if I wanted a media company, I would start my own." Then the assumption was, it's $250 million. It's not that much given Jeff's wealth. Then of course it starts losing money, and then it becomes a different focus for Jeff Bezos. I will say earlier this year, I was at an event at his home in DC where he was honoring with the- I think it was the International Women's Foundation.
It was an award for incredibly brave women journalists. He spoke very movingly at the beginning, and was present throughout. Quite a long presentation of three award-winning female journalists who'd really done some quite extraordinary work from the Ukraine and from Mexico and from Iran. There was no question that he seemed incredibly interested and sincere in his respect for the work of journalists. When something starts losing around $100 million, it has a different kind of focus for you. I'm sure he brought Will Lewis in to fix the business, but no one would want to oversee the breaking of The Washington Post brand.
It's impossible to overstate the position it has in American culture. Not just journalistic culture, but in American culture. We had, I think three years ago, the film, Tom Hanks in The Post. Obviously, All The President's Men is an absolute classic, the Alan Pakula movie. Marty Baron, who was a recent editor before Sally Buzbee with Spotlight. This is a newspaper which for all its drop in traffic, which will Lewis has highlighted it's 50% drop in traffic over the last couple of years, has an unbelievable place in American culture.
Alan: Final question, Joanna. We're coming up to a really big election, really important election. Last time round, The Post and The New York Times were really crucial in standing up to the attempt of Trump really to demand a full scale attack on all media. We were the enemies of the people. You had two outstanding editors in Dean McKay and Marty Baron. I suppose the question is, if The Post is in a much weakened state and maybe Bezos is tiring of being a media baron, how serious is that?
Joanna: Will Lewis has brought in Matt Murray, who is a former editor of The Wall Street Journal, to be the interim editor for The Washington Post through the election. One might ask why is he not bringing in an editor who actually would stay the course? It's a slightly odd choice to bring in a British editor to run The Washington Post with a built-in admission that actually he's not able to see the paper through the election. That seems to me a slightly odd decision.
Matt Murray is going to stay apparently and edit one of the three newsrooms that Will Lewis is now building out in what he hopes will be a solution to their financial crisis. I don't think anyone has any particular reason to doubt that Matt Murray wouldn't be a robust upholder of journalistic freedoms and coverage of the election. There's nothing to suggest that in his past. He was a thoroughly competent editor of The Wall Street Journal.
Lionel: You're one of the British crew editing major news outlets. What do you think the Brits have got that the Americans haven't?
Joanna: I'm thrilled that you count The Daily Beast alongside The Washington Post. There's been much interest in the fact that suddenly there's a collective group of Brits running America news institutions. Obviously Mark Thompson at CNN, and Will Lewis, and myself at The Daily Beast, and Emma Tucker at The Wall Street Journal. I think we're good on a budget. We are good in crises and we're used to dealing with smaller resources. I know when I got to Hearst, they were very apologetic about how small the resources were, but I assured them that they were four times as big as anything I'd seen in a British organization. Although the stakes are bigger, the audience is bigger, the revenue is bigger, and the impact is bigger.
We're relatively unflappable in a crisis. The industry is in an absolute crisis now. I think we grew up in a homogenous culture where people read a lot of newspapers and where news was very important and it was the collective tissue that kept a small country together. It's different here because there are many different aspects to American life. The south, the west. Britain is a one, is essentially a city state in London. Everything happens in London. You have media, you have finance, you have politics, it's all happening within a very small physical area. Obviously, in America, you have very different areas. You've got the Bay Area where tech is churning out the future. You've got LA with the entertainment industry. You've got DC where politics is. You've got New York where finance is. I think we're just used to dealing with very robust news organizations and a very competitive news environment. It's been slightly more regional or geographic here than it has quite as competitive. That's changing because of digital and because everybody can access everything all at once now.
Actually, I think Brits are good at that level of competition. The other thing, which might, actually, just be worth a mention is just that American management is different to British management. The American managers are more respectful of their employees largely and take their opinions in a different way. In Britain, especially with the culture of Fleet Street, there's a history of robust argument at shouting at people. That's not the case here. What was surprising for a lot of people was understanding that Will Lewis had got really angry in the meeting and said, "Look, this is your fault that the readership is down. Nobody's reading your stuff."
That's not actually for the most part how managers behave in America. I think that was very surprising. It's exactly how managers behave in the UK. Here people tend to be a bit more circumspect and a bit more thoughtful, and a bit more respectful of the situation they find themselves in. I would think at that moment that perhaps he hadn't actually been paying attention to the fact he might be being recorded and that this was all going to go outside of the newsroom and that actually what he was doing was broadcasting to a larger audience. I think in that moment, he probably forgot that.
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Lionel: Alan, you asked the billion-dollar question, which is does this story about Will Lewis, the embattled publisher of The Washington Post, have legs? I think the key fact that emerged is that, as Ben Smith said, "The New York Times has put a posse of investigative journalists on this story. They're going to dig through all the work that Nick Davis did on looking at the court papers relating to the phone hacking cases, and then they're going to look at Will Lewis' own role at Murdoch news organization."
Alan: Yes, I think that is significant. I think there is there is stuff to find out. Knowing The New York Times reporters who are on this story, they will find it out. The other bit that came out from Ben was this just suggestion that Bezos was in love with The Washington Post and the idea of owning The Washington Post in 2013, and his mind is maybe in a different place. I'm just looking at the piece I've referenced.
This was 2021, so only three years ago, in The New York Times, How Marty Baron and Jeff Bezos remade The Washington Post, the hell of a very different newspaper from the one he originally signed off to run. It talks about how Bezos signed off on a massive expansion of the headroom count. Since 2013, the newsroom headroom count has nearly doubled, expected to reach 1,010 this year with 26 locations around the world.
That was an almost...investment increase in the newsroom. If it's true that Bezos is now more interested in Hollywood, less interested in newspapers, a bit maybe warmer towards Trump, I think that's significant.
Lionel: I wouldn't bet my house on that. I think Jeff Bezos is disappointed about the financial state of The Post. I think he believes that change is needed. That's why he went for an outsider, William Lewis. I think he knows that if you look at newspapers and news organizations, this isn't a 5 or 10-year bet. You've got to be there for the longer term. Don Graham of the Graham family, who sold the paper to Jeff Bezos just over 10 years ago, he's still alive, kicking.
He will be very protective about The Post. I think that Jeff Bezos is also not somebody who gives in easily. He has a great line about good failure and bad failure. Good failure is when you take a risk. It may not work, but you come back at it again. That's the way it is. I don't know. I'm going to put a bet on that he doesn't sell anytime soon.
Alan: Yes, I'm not so worried about him selling as just gradually letting it wither on the vine. That's my fear.
Lionel: You don't take a risk, appoint someone like Will Lewis to let it wither. He wants change.
Alan: Let's hope.
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Lionel: That's all from Media Confidential. Thank you to Ben Smith and Joanna Coles for joining us. We'll be back next week with more news from Behind the Headlines.
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Alan: You can send any questions or comments to mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk or get in touch on X, formerly Twitter, where we are @mediaconfspod. 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.
