Washington Post implodes, It's probably a good thing
"Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff... I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
My first real stretch in Washington DC was the two years I spent interning for a budding conservative news television network. There in the shadow of Union Station I was baptized in the swamp water. I was in college, had no money, it was a tough couple of years of commuting, but every time I drove into DC from the distant suburbs I had a smile on my face. I was a political science student, and look at me, I was doing real live political science.
Though I enjoyed myself at America’s Voice, and I got to do all sorts of cool media things because the shop wasn’t union (I got to touch all the knobs and editing machines), I realized that I wanted to write, not be on camera or in the production room. I was reading a lot of PJ O’Rourke at the time. I wanted to do what he did.
The anchor I worked for asked me one day after a show what I wanted to do with myself after college. I think now that he was feeling me out for a potential job, but I told him that I was beginning to think that TV was not for me and that I might go the newspaper route. This answer was stupid for about ten reasons, but on the drive home I realized one of those stupid reasons. Who was going to hire me at a place like The (liberal) Washington Post? There is no way I’d ever fit in there. Maybe The Washington Times would have me.
This was before the great conservative media revolution post 2000. Drudge (Remember how good Drudge used to be?) was just beginning to gain traction.
But The Washington Post was where I really wanted to have a byline. It was the flagship publication of political America, superior to even the great New York Times on some points.
I was young. I used to care a lot more about this sort of thing.
While interning I also worked part time for GEICO in a call center. It was there that I was first introduced to Warren Buffett’s general investment philosophy (thanks to the human resources department). The Oracle of Omaha owned GEICO because he considered it a protected cash cow. GEICO stands for Government Employees Insurance Company. If all hell broke loose in the economy it was an asset that would whether almost any storm. Government employees never get fired, which also means that they always pay their insurance bills. Buffett I was told looked for companies that he understood fundamentally and had a “moat” around them. GEICO was one of these.
So was The Washington Post when he began acquiring shares (ultimately 28%) in 1973.
The Washington Post was an institution, a vital part of the political machine, and the journal of the political caste. It was insulated. Its readership was vast and powerful. It was a near monopoly in DC. It had all the hallmarks of a Buffett investment. So when he got out of his WaPo position in 2014 my ears perked. What was Buffett thinking? Jeff Bezos had purchased the company at large the year before. Maybe the two business giants didn’t see eye to eye.
With time it became clear that the exit was because Buffett felt the market winds shifting and he took the opportunity to get out while the getting was still relatively good. Bezos saw opportunities at The Washington Post that Buffett did not.
Buffett has his ways and The Post no longer fit his model.
He was right, again.
In the next few years I watched the newspaper that I had once dreamed of working for decline with the rest of the world’s newspapers. Now 11 years after the Bezos takeover reality has come truly and finally rushing into the newsroom. The Trump bump is no more. The DC news monopoly is long gone. Subscriptions have fallen into a deep dark chasm.
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