144 Citizens
have seen repeatedly throughout this book, benefited most from the
movement of media from television and print to online environments.
All three learned an important lesson from Microsoft: don’t become responsible for creating content. It was left to Amazon to both ignore this
message in terms of its own video production (to lure in Amazon Prime
customers), and to invest in one of the oldest media formats around: a
newspaper.
Founded in 1877, The Washington Post was the first newspaper to be
published seven days a week in Washington, D.C. (when a Sunday edition was added in 1880), and in its early decades, it promoted the agenda
of the Democratic Party before becoming more sympathetic to the Republicans after it was bought by financier Eugene Meyer in 1933.
77
It
was Meyer who re-established the Post’s reputation and financial health;
he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Philip Graham, and then, after his
death in 1963, his wife Katherine Graham. During her tenure, the paper
published its most famous series of stories chronicling the investigation
of Watergate, leading President Nixon to tell Admiral Thomas Moorer,
“The press is your enemy”.
78
Woodward’s and Bernstein’s editor, Ben
Bradlee, was described by his biographer as “the living avatar of oldschool journalistic integrity and rough-hewn charm”,
79
although many
others working in the industry saw the introduction of a Style section
(which was consequently repeated across all national newspapers) as his
“clearest personal monument”.
80
Certainly, Graham was more ambivalent about the achievements of Watergate: in an article for New York
Magazine published three months after Nixon left office, she made clear
what the fight with the former president had cost her: millions in fees
for legal defence and to protect TV licences, and the low value of The
Post on Wall Street. She considered the temptation of journalists to consider themselves “heroes” to be a dangerous one, but also that to ensure
freedom of the press – an expensive activity – the newspaper had to be
profitable.
81
For a period, she achieved this, raising the Post to first place
in income growth during the 1980s and increasing her own personal
fortune to $1.1 billion although, in a harbinger of future woes, the paper
stopped contributing to the reporters’ pension fund during that decade
and journalists’ salaries fell from first place to fourteenth.
Graham was very much a twentieth-century media mogul, but in the
subsequent decades, the newspaper began to suffer a considerable decline. Dave Kindred’s 2010 book, Morning Miracle, detailed how the
title struggled to maintain profitability and journalistic standards in
the face of alternative digital sources, and thought that the Post was “a
great newspaper dying with dignity”.
82
The paper had struggled with
profitability during its entire existence: although Meyer had increased
circulation to 162,000 and pushed advertising from 4 million lines to 12
million in the 1930s, it struggled to make money at many times throughout its history. US daily newspaper circulation peaked between 62 and
have seen repeatedly throughout this book, benefited most from the
movement of media from television and print to online environments.
All three learned an important lesson from Microsoft: don’t become responsible for creating content. It was left to Amazon to both ignore this
message in terms of its own video production (to lure in Amazon Prime
customers), and to invest in one of the oldest media formats around: a
newspaper.
Founded in 1877, The Washington Post was the first newspaper to be
published seven days a week in Washington, D.C. (when a Sunday edition was added in 1880), and in its early decades, it promoted the agenda
of the Democratic Party before becoming more sympathetic to the Republicans after it was bought by financier Eugene Meyer in 1933.
77
It
was Meyer who re-established the Post’s reputation and financial health;
he was succeeded by his son-in-law, Philip Graham, and then, after his
death in 1963, his wife Katherine Graham. During her tenure, the paper
published its most famous series of stories chronicling the investigation
of Watergate, leading President Nixon to tell Admiral Thomas Moorer,
“The press is your enemy”.
78
Woodward’s and Bernstein’s editor, Ben
Bradlee, was described by his biographer as “the living avatar of oldschool journalistic integrity and rough-hewn charm”,
79
although many
others working in the industry saw the introduction of a Style section
(which was consequently repeated across all national newspapers) as his
“clearest personal monument”.
80
Certainly, Graham was more ambivalent about the achievements of Watergate: in an article for New York
Magazine published three months after Nixon left office, she made clear
what the fight with the former president had cost her: millions in fees
for legal defence and to protect TV licences, and the low value of The
Post on Wall Street. She considered the temptation of journalists to consider themselves “heroes” to be a dangerous one, but also that to ensure
freedom of the press – an expensive activity – the newspaper had to be
profitable.
81
For a period, she achieved this, raising the Post to first place
in income growth during the 1980s and increasing her own personal
fortune to $1.1 billion although, in a harbinger of future woes, the paper
stopped contributing to the reporters’ pension fund during that decade
and journalists’ salaries fell from first place to fourteenth.
Graham was very much a twentieth-century media mogul, but in the
subsequent decades, the newspaper began to suffer a considerable decline. Dave Kindred’s 2010 book, Morning Miracle, detailed how the
title struggled to maintain profitability and journalistic standards in
the face of alternative digital sources, and thought that the Post was “a
great newspaper dying with dignity”.
82
The paper had struggled with
profitability during its entire existence: although Meyer had increased
circulation to 162,000 and pushed advertising from 4 million lines to 12
million in the 1930s, it struggled to make money at many times throughout its history. US daily newspaper circulation peaked between 62 and