Inside the Seattle-area home of their new boss, a group of Washington Post leaders nervously waited as Jeff Bezos silently reviewed a memo detailing a struggling newspaper business.
The Amazon founder stood up. Some thought he was going to leave. He went to grab some water and came back.
“I don’t get discouraged that easily,” he told them. “You’re right. We need to grow. We’ll just figure out how to do it.”
That was the beginning of a resurgence at the Post sparked by Bezos, according to Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor who stopped in Seattle on Monday to discuss his new book, “Collision of Power.”
Baron said it was a total surprise when Bezos paid $250 million a decade ago to buy the Post from the Graham family. But he was optimistic, given that the paper badly needed new ideas as it was cutting staff and “sliding into oblivion,” as Baron described.
Bezos pushed the Post to establish a bigger national and international presence, and to appeal to a younger audience.
“The internet is destroying the pillars of your business, but it’s also giving you a gift,” Bezos told leadership. That gift was limitless distribution around the globe, thanks to the internet.
“The cost of adding an additional reader or subscriber was essentially zero,” Baron said. “[Bezos] said, ‘take the gift.”
But not every idea from Bezos was well received.
Baron criticized Bezos’ decision to eliminate pension benefits for longtime employees, calling it “needlessly provocative.” He also took issue with a proposal to create an overnight team that would aggregate other news coverage and publish content every 15 minutes, and the way Bezos viewed editors as “indirect” employees who had less impact on the reader.
“That was a complete misreading of what editors do,” Baron said.
But overall Baron said he appreciated Bezos’ business and technology acumen and how he stayed away from editorial decisions, particularly related to himself or Amazon.
Baron also respected how Bezos handled criticism from former President Donald Trump, who went to battle with the ex-Amazon CEO on a number of issues, including his ownership of the Post.
“I admire the fact that he showed a lot of integrity and protected the independence of our journalism, despite being subject to unrelenting pressures by the most powerful person on Earth,” Baron said.
The Post developed its current motto — Democracy Dies in Darkness — under Bezos’ ownership.
“He wanted us to come up with something that would define our role in this country,” Baron said. “He wanted it to be an idea that people wanted to hold on to, not just a newspaper that people would subscribe to.”
Before joining the Post in 2012, Baron was editor of the Boston Globe, where he led investigative coverage of systemic child sex abuse by Boston Catholic priests that was depicted in the Academy Award Best Picture winner movie Spotlight.
Baron said he’s concerned about both the future of democracy in the U.S. and the demise of many news organizations across the country. Even the Post is struggling to retain subscribers and plans to reduce staff.
Baron said it’s critical to “hold power to account,” both at the national level and with smaller local outlets that he described as “the glue that holds the community together.”
“When people in office feel that nobody’s watching, they act accordingly,” he said. “It’s not in the best interest of the public. Thankfully we still have an independent press in this country but it needs to be a lot stronger, and needs to be more strongly supported.”
