Chapter 1: What led to the massive layoffs at the Washington Post?
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All right. Hey, everybody. We got a great show coming for you with Marty Baron. And I was kind of annoyed that he waited till we stopped recording to make fun of me for the fact that he sees my clips on social media. And I look like I just got out of bed. I'm just like, you know what? Okay. All right. We're in a different world, right? We're not buttoned up Woodward and Bernstein material.
Sometimes I'm hung over in podcasting. Let a man live. But it was wonderful. And I think will give us a lot of insight into the corruption that has led to the crack up at the Washington Post. And I think there's a lot of important themes that are related to that, in addition to kind of the media gossip element of it. Stick around for that. First, I do want to flag about our live shows.
Texas is going to be on pre-sale for Bulwark subscribers. So become a subscriber to Bulwark Plus at thebulwark.com. Pre-sale opens up today, Thursday. Tickets will be open up to everybody on Friday. And if the Minnesota experience is anything to guide us, they're going to sell out quick. So go check those out. Reminder, we're in Dallas March 18th. and Austin, March 19th.
Become a Bloor Plus subscriber to get that early access to tickets, get the best seats in the house so you can get close to me, throw spitballs at me, etc. As far as Minnesota is concerned, we added the bonus show on Wednesday, February 18th. There are a couple hundred tickets left, so go check those out as well.
All the proceeds from those two shows in Minneapolis are going to go to Second Harvest Heartland. It's doing great work feeding people that... are struggling with food insecurity because of all the nonsense happening in Minneapolis. So look forward to seeing you guys on the road in Minneapolis, Dallas, or Austin. Up next, former executive editor of the Washington Post, Marty Barron.
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show former executive editor of The Washington Post, author of Collision of Power, Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post. It's Marty Baron. Thanks for coming on the show, Marty. Thanks for having me. Well, I think obviously I've brought you on to talk about the war in Ukraine.
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Chapter 2: How has Jeff Bezos influenced the direction of the Washington Post?
He didn't take the dividends. He put them in back into investing. We expanded. The staff grew from about 540 when he arrived to we were headed to about 1,000 when I retired in February 2021. And he stood up for us.
I mean, during Trump's campaign in 2015, when he himself, when the Post came under attack and then he himself came under the attack, he said quite clearly and forcefully that that was no way for someone who aspired to be president to behave. He talked about the role of an independent press. And he stood by that.
I mean, look, you may remember that Trump talked about doubling, tripling, quadrupling the postal rates for the delivery of Amazon packages, that sort of thing. It was numbers pulled out of thin air, of course.
He hadn't done a study of any sort and said that the Post was just a lobbying organization for Jeff Bezos, that it was a tax dodge, all this nonsense, none of it true, not even close to true. And then toward the end of his administration, Trump's administration, he actually interfered to make sure that a big cloud computing contract with the Defense Department, $10 billion, did not go to Amazon.
And it did not go to Amazon. And then there was a lot of litigation around it. And it was rebid and all this sort of stuff. But very complicated. But Bezos stood up to that. In fact, I mean, people forget. I mean, Bezos and Amazon, they filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department for the way that it awarded that contract. And they called upon Trump to actually be deposed. to be deposed.
And they said that the interference by Trump was because of his animosity toward Bezos because of his ownership of the Washington Post. I thought that was all good. I admired him for doing that. I admired the support that he gave me. I admired the support that he gave my colleagues. I admired his support for the Post and its mission and for the press generally.
And so what I did is I told it like it was. That's how it happened. And now I think what I'm trying to do is tell it as it is today. And it's different.
I wonder why that is. If you saw any signs back then, you wrote in the book that one of the things Don Graham told Bezos when he sold it was basically that when you own the post and the post publishes something that makes somebody in power mad, they'll try to hurt you. Did that sink in with him, do you think?
Did you have any conversations with him at the time that made you think that he was getting weak-kneed and all that? I'm just wondering what those conversations were like in the first time around. Well, first of all, thanks for reading the book. It looks like you did read it. You can tell when you're a podcast guest. Absolutely. I'm just going to come clean because you're being candid.
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of the 'Democracy Dies in Darkness' motto?
Both of them have significant contracts with the federal government. Amazon has a lot. Blue Origin would like to have many. And so I'm concerned that he's prioritizing these other business interests over the post.
I don't happen to think that's quite the reason for the cuts or at all the reason for the cuts more recently, but it's something that has made the post financial predicament far worse than it needed to be. And that's what I'm worried about.
I want to get into that, but just I had to follow up on the question. Bezos wanted the democracy dies in darkness motto?
Yeah, he did. We spent two years on that, believe it or not. I was glad when it was finally over, we didn't have to talk about it anymore. That was a phrase that Bob Woodward had used for many years. It was sort of an adaptation of what a judge had once said. It was not in the context of Watergate, really, but
It came well after that, and the judge had talked about democracy dying behind closed doors. We had tried a bunch of others. I think many of us were skeptical of that as a motto or mission statement. You know, you don't know many marketing people who say that you should include death and darkness in your motto. There are very few.
We tried light, but it sounded too self-adulatory or it sounded cult-like, actually. So we avoided that and we struggled with probably a thousand different options. And then finally, I think maybe an exasperation, Bezos said, well, let's just go with democracy dies in darkness. And I was fine. We don't have to talk about it anymore. And it was a huge hit. It was a real huge hit.
And it got criticized in the way that you have suggested. And in other ways, one person talked about it as our new goth vibe, but it was hugely popular. People can cite it all over the world. I I've traveled all over the world. Everybody knows it. And that's what Bezos wanted. He did not want us to spend time coming up with a motto that nobody would ever remember again.
Nobody cared. Well, it's kind of apt that it's come around to bite him a little bit in that case. Just one of the things that I just had to ask you about, because speaking of books I didn't read all of, Jared Kushner wrote a very long memoir. And in that book, one of the things he says that he writes about is trying to force Fred Ryan to fire you. and issue apologies from the Russia coverage.
What was happening with that? What was happening with little Jared?
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Chapter 4: How did Bezos's ownership change the Washington Post's strategy?
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All right, let's go to today. You said something that piqued my interest, and I want to talk with just the economics of the post first, because I think that's an important backdrop to the politics of what we're seeing is happening. You said, I think, that you were profitable for six years?
Yeah, six years, basically.
Look, from my background, I'm a free marketer. I understand sometimes there's creative destruction and things, you know, the market no longer is interested in a certain product and things change and things evolve. And you see some right wingers doing that critique right now of people lamenting the firings of the post saying, well, it's just they weren't running a good business.
This is what happens. There have been firings in a lot of parts of our economy lately. But the distinction here is that the Post was making money during the first Trump term. The Post demonstrated how to be profitable. And it seems to me that the current leadership just made a decision to go a different direction that would make it unprofitable. What do you make of that assertion?
Well, yeah, look, I mean, when Bezos bought it, he changed the strategy of the Post. The Post was primarily a regional news organization. It was focused on the Washington metro area, with the exception of politics, where it covered the entire country. And Bezos said we needed to be national and we needed to be international.
And then we needed to appeal to a younger audience, because if we didn't cultivate a younger audience, we wouldn't have one in the future. And so he asked us to come up with a bunch of initiatives. And we did come up with those. And he approved a pretty much all of them. And pretty much all of them were successful. And we innovated like constantly. And people forget about that.
I mean, in 2015, Fast Company Magazine named us the most innovative media company in the world. In 2018, it did it again. It named us the most innovative media company in the world. And by the way, the eighth most innovative company, period, in the world. And so there was a lot that we did at the time to adapt to the different media environment.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of government contracts on media independence?
Some were advocacy oriented, some leaning left, right, what have you. But for the post, I think it is, you know, you need to keep your eye on what's really important. And that is digging into what people of power in this country are doing, because what they do can affect the lives of ordinary people and does affect the lives of ordinary people.
And the single most powerful person in the world is the president of the United States. And so it's not a matter of using a political calculus in your news coverage. It's a matter of saying, are we fulfilling our responsibilities to unearth the facts that the public needs and deserves to know?
And Matt Murray is saying that there needs to be a political calculus there. And he says, we're only writing for one slice of the audience. I don't know how else to read that. So to me, like what they proposed yesterday is we're going to fire a lot of people and come up with a new strategy. And the new strategy is we're going to try to appeal to an audience that I'm not sure exists.
Like, where is the audience for hard news, MAGA hard news written? You know, I don't see it. Tucker Carlson said he tried to start that. He wanted to create the New York Times on the right with a daily caller that utterly failed. And they ended up doing opinion slop. Their stated strategy to me is trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't exist.
Well, that may be right. I mean, you need to ask him about it. Maybe he'll agree to come on your program. We'll see.
But, I mean, we're seeing – you can speculate. We're seeing this with CBS. They're doing the same thing, right? Washington Post and CBS are basically doing the same thing, right?
Sure, and I was about to mention CBS, and that's what concerns me about what's happening at CBS is that, you know, Barry Weiss has talked about, well, we want to get the people who are center-right and the people who are center-left and all that sort of thing.
And I don't believe you should use a political calculus in running a news organization of this consequence and this size and this kind of history, whether it's the Washington Post or CBS. I think the job is to be an ally of the facts and to be an ally of the truth. And, you know, that's the mission that exists, whether the administration happens to be Democratic or Republican.
And that's the role that the Post has historically played. I know that the critics on the right say that's not the case, but the facts prove otherwise. I don't believe in using a political calculus like that. I believe saying, why do we have a free press in this country?
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Chapter 6: How does the current leadership's strategy differ from past successes?
But I didn't hear that yesterday. And I haven't heard it for the last several years. I mean, they keep talking about resets. They keep talking about innovation. And I want to see, well, okay, well... Show me your innovation. And I don't see much happening. So I do believe it needs to be a sustainable business. Of course, Bezos can afford it. I mean, he's worth $250, $260 billion at this point.
He was worth about $25 billion, a mere $25 billion when he bought Post in 2013. And yeah, he could afford to subsidize it forever. But I think it's a good idea for it to be a sustainable business. And I think they should work with that.
That is crazy. He's 10x his net worth since he bought the Washington Post and all this other stuff.
Yeah, the Post didn't really contribute to that multiplier effect, but to the extent that it subtracted from it, it wasn't by very much.
That's got some French Revolution kind of vibes to me when he's gaining at that kind of scale during this period. Related to this, I'm sure you saw on Monday, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, calling it Secretary of War now. He visited the Blue Origin facilities in Cape Canaveral. He was on his Arsenal of Freedom campaign. They also do some cringe branding over there in the Trump administration.
It's a campaign for promoting military contractors. Bezos was there. talking about how they're supporting the mission. And Hegseth said Blue Origin was going to do plenty of winning in securing government contracts. I mean, the conflict of that is just at such a different scale than what you were talking about with Amazon and Bezos in the first term.
What is your reaction to Hegseth saying that Bezos is going to do plenty of winning? Right.
Well, first of all, let me say that I don't put Democracy Dies in Darkness in the category of cringe branding, but okay. So just to get that on the record, if you don't mind.
I tried to sneak it in there. I just tried to sneak it in there, Marty.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential paths forward for the Washington Post?
And keep in mind, remember that when there was that breakup between Elon Musk and Trump, one of the first things Trump said is, a good way for us to save money in this government is to cancel all our contracts with SpaceX. That's what he said. And that's what he would have done, I assume, if there had been true enduring hostility between Trump and Musk.
I think you get close to kind of what is an appealing answer to me, which is that we're actually talking about ego. Because the thing that's frustrating with me is like, I guess Trump's threats are more credible, but he also has taco'd a lot. And I guess you don't want to be the first company that has to go under because of threats from the government. But no companies have gone under.
Disney could have survived Trump. Amazon could survive Trump. Apple. And these are some of the richest countries in the history of the world. And I know you've got shareholder interests and all that. I get it. But they did that in the first term. And to me, you get closer to something that I can wrap my head around if it's like, I didn't want Larry Ellison and Elon Musk to beat me.
Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are going to beat me in these spaces if I don't suck up to Trump. And I can't handle that. What do you think about that?
Well, you know, I mean, I think there was a real threat to them. I don't think that it's not that they couldn't survive because I don't know that they really. So let me finish. So it's not that they couldn't survive, but they may not have been successful. And their objective is to make more money, to have higher profits, to watch their stock go up, to grow.
And that would have been much more difficult if Trump had been their opponent. Definitely so. I mean, a big growth area for Amazon was contracts with the government for cloud computing, period, particularly in the area of national security. If Trump had said we're not giving them any contracts, could Amazon survive? It could survive. Would it be as successful as it was? No. Would its stock tank?
Probably so. Would Bezos still be wealthy? Yeah. Would he be as wealthy as he is today? No. No, I think there's a real threat there. And I mean, the taco stuff is mostly common as dealings with foreign governments.
And that's a different that's a different field. I mean, he would still be more wealthy than he was in 2013 when he bought the post. He was only worth $25 billion. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I just think nobody's tried. I guess I would like to see one of them try to stare him down because I guess I just I think he might taco on the economy.
I think he might taco on the economy on an economic thing. If it's like, sorry.
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Chapter 8: What is Marty Baron's advice for the future of the Washington Post?
I think if it were independent, they can make a very convincing argument to many of the subscribers who have left the post that they're now on a new course and that they should come back. And I think they would by the hundreds of thousands because they want the kind of work the Washington Post is known for doing. And so I would love to see something like that.
And then, of course, it would have to be a fundamentally digital organization. That's the way things are these days. That's the way people live their lives and get their information. They would have to experiment in all sorts of ways with podcasts like this one, give you a little bit of competition. You could use it. And then, you know, and short form video as well.
So I think that's clearly the way that a lot of people are getting information and they would have to think in those terms. And so I would like to see that. I mean, I think that the post is capable of a lot of innovation. I think it demonstrated that in the past, but they still need to be true to their mission, true to their core principles.
You cannot give up your core principles and be successful.
I'd welcome the competition. That would be great. That's fine. I'm looking at the charts now, and I can't find a Washington Post podcast. Here it is, 82.
So that's not that good. They're killing it. They announced that they're eliminating that podcast, by the way. Okay. Well, so 82 is gone. All right. Well, that's good.
Nice to see you keeping the stats really close. More room to run for me. Well, you know, it's important to know what's out there in the marketplace. Metrics for everyone. Yeah, I guess. Though, as you know, there's limits to that, right? Like, just deciding to do everything by the metrics takes you to the Tucker Carlson message I saw earlier, the Daily Caller.
You know, Daily Caller was good for a moment. That's right. We could do that. I could come on here and, you know, I know what the people want. But if you just give people what they want all the time, there's a lack of sustainability to that.
I totally agree. I think you have to have a soul. You have to know what your soul is. You have to be faithful to your purpose in life. And once you abandon that, people know that you've done that and they abandon you.
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