Derek Thompson

If you ask me, the Washington Post didn't just lose revenue in the last five years.

Most importantly, what it lost is what 21st century news organizations most need, an identity.

Every once in a while, somebody asks me whether we'll ever go back to the media norms of the 1950s, that mythological era where we all allegedly agreed on a single set of facts, when we could count the number of TV channels on one hand, when newspapers owned local monopolies, and when the words of Walter Cronkite held a special avuncular power.

The answer is no.

We're never going back to that time.

We're never going back to a world when news was scarce,

The future of news is abundant for better and for worse.

The messy jungle of the 19th century is here to stay.

The question now for the Washington Post and for everybody else in my business is not how to escape the jungle, but how to survive in the jungle by doing good work that also happens to be good business.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Plain English.

Jim Vanda, hi.

Welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

Big fan.

Thank you.

I want to do something a little bit ambitious, maybe too ambitious, considering that you are my first pancake.

This is my first video podcast.

I want to tell a 20-year history of The Washington Post that doubles as a 20-year history of changes to the media and political landscape that I know you've reflected on in recent essays since this is the 20-year anniversary of you leaving The Washington Post and starting Politico.

I want to tell a 20-year history