Citizens 147
New York Times in terms of traffic in October 2015. While this was not
converting into massive advertising revenue at the time (as Nicco Mele
of the Los Angeles Times observed, a print ad reaching half a million
people could earn $50,000, while a Google-served ad would only make
$20 for a similar readership
94
), the Post was clearly setting itself up as a
brand that would have a wider base for conversions to subscriptions and
ad sales should the market change in future.
Where Bezos had, probably not entirely intentionally, transformed
editorial directly was by opening up the Post to a much wider range
of reporting. As discussed in Dave Kindred’s Morning Miracle, in May
2004, the managing editor Steve Coll suggested to then publisher, Don
Graham, an aggressive Internet strategy that he called “Beyond Washington”: although it was the top print newspaper in the country, a resolute focus on Washington news was denying it an even wider readership.
Although not opposed to the Internet, Graham wanted to maintain the
monopoly on reporting Washington news that had made the print paper
so profitable in the past and so restricted such growth.
95
As such, while
much of Bezos’s liberating effect on the Post was undoubtedly due to
the financing he brought with him, it was also because he gave the title
a second chance to be “truly national and international” according to
Executive Editor Marty Baron.
96
Alongside this, however, another development took place which indicated the way in which big tech would
influence the Post much more effectively than by simply opening it up to
an international audience: Arc.
While Bezos may not have been hands-on in terms of directing editorial policy, almost certainly recognising that to draw direct attention
to himself as a new Citizen Kane would allow him to become a target
for critics. Even silence was not a perfect protection, as became evident during the disappearance of Washington Post journalist, Jamal
Khashoggi, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, 2018. As
gruesome details began to emerge linking that disappearance to murder on the part of the Saudis, stories began to circulate that Bezos’s
own lack of response was due to conflicts between the Post’s reporting
and the Amazon’s commercial interests in the region.
97
This was a particularly sharp version of such conflicts, but for his part, Bezos’s own
preference more generally seemed to be to reorganise the Post behind
the scenes. Gerry Smith reported for Bloomberg in December 2015
that, according to the Post’s CIO, he had “his fingerprints in a lot of
things”.
98
One of those things was Arc: built as a content management
system for the paper, it was designed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG
editor for contributors but also the one that employed powerful analytics tools to allow senior editors to see which stories were attracting
most attention. Just as Amazon had learned a great deal about consumer’s shopping habits, the Post would be able to gather data on what
readers were viewing, allowing a constant tweaking of content: by the
New York Times in terms of traffic in October 2015. While this was not
converting into massive advertising revenue at the time (as Nicco Mele
of the Los Angeles Times observed, a print ad reaching half a million
people could earn $50,000, while a Google-served ad would only make
$20 for a similar readership
94
), the Post was clearly setting itself up as a
brand that would have a wider base for conversions to subscriptions and
ad sales should the market change in future.
Where Bezos had, probably not entirely intentionally, transformed
editorial directly was by opening up the Post to a much wider range
of reporting. As discussed in Dave Kindred’s Morning Miracle, in May
2004, the managing editor Steve Coll suggested to then publisher, Don
Graham, an aggressive Internet strategy that he called “Beyond Washington”: although it was the top print newspaper in the country, a resolute focus on Washington news was denying it an even wider readership.
Although not opposed to the Internet, Graham wanted to maintain the
monopoly on reporting Washington news that had made the print paper
so profitable in the past and so restricted such growth.
95
As such, while
much of Bezos’s liberating effect on the Post was undoubtedly due to
the financing he brought with him, it was also because he gave the title
a second chance to be “truly national and international” according to
Executive Editor Marty Baron.
96
Alongside this, however, another development took place which indicated the way in which big tech would
influence the Post much more effectively than by simply opening it up to
an international audience: Arc.
While Bezos may not have been hands-on in terms of directing editorial policy, almost certainly recognising that to draw direct attention
to himself as a new Citizen Kane would allow him to become a target
for critics. Even silence was not a perfect protection, as became evident during the disappearance of Washington Post journalist, Jamal
Khashoggi, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, 2018. As
gruesome details began to emerge linking that disappearance to murder on the part of the Saudis, stories began to circulate that Bezos’s
own lack of response was due to conflicts between the Post’s reporting
and the Amazon’s commercial interests in the region.
97
This was a particularly sharp version of such conflicts, but for his part, Bezos’s own
preference more generally seemed to be to reorganise the Post behind
the scenes. Gerry Smith reported for Bloomberg in December 2015
that, according to the Post’s CIO, he had “his fingerprints in a lot of
things”.
98
One of those things was Arc: built as a content management
system for the paper, it was designed to be an easy-to-use WYSIWYG
editor for contributors but also the one that employed powerful analytics tools to allow senior editors to see which stories were attracting
most attention. Just as Amazon had learned a great deal about consumer’s shopping habits, the Post would be able to gather data on what
readers were viewing, allowing a constant tweaking of content: by the