The self-regard of journalists, the plain old-fashioned infatuation they feel for themselves and for their jobs, is familiar to readers. But this past week, even by the onanistic standards of the trade, the Washington Post set a new high-water mark for professional narcissism.
The Post, which was sold two years ago to Amazon.com mogul Jeffrey Bezos, has moved three blocks from its brutalist 1972 headquarters in downtown Washington to several floors of a nearby office building. In one sense, of course, this transition is a metaphor for the state of the newspaper business: When the Post‘s huge concrete bunker opened during Richard Nixon’s presidency, no one among its business or editorial staff would have guessed that, some decades later, they would be “downsizing” into somebody’s else’s real estate. Indeed, the word “downsizing” didn’t exist at the time.
But the Post is nothing if not resourceful, and so turned this retreat into a kind of advance: Thirty of the 40 pages of the December 13 issue of the Washington Post Magazine were devoted exclusively to the Post, to the joys and sorrows of its move across town—not least, to the amazing men and women who work for the Washington Post. As we say, in the wearisome annals of media vanity, The Scrapbook has never seen anything quite like it.
The cover featured Bob Woodward, naturally, surrounded by storage boxes and decorative reminders of the Watergate scandal. The three Post front pages reproduced within—”President Kennedy Shot Dead,” “Nixon Resigns,” “Obama Takes Charge”—neatly summarized, by Post lights, the three most important events of modern history. A long, lachrymose essay on the Graham family’s ownership included various quotations from the late Benjamin Bradlee and several invocations (with straight face) of onetime owner Eugene L. Meyer’s “Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper.”
The centerpiece of the issue was a lavishly detailed description of the Post‘s new quarters (“The new Post will commemorate the old Post, the historic Post. Near the Hub will be a wall reserved for Pulitzer Prize winners—with much of the wall empty, in deference to future excellence”) interspersed with Vogue-style fashion shots of Post celebrities, including op-ed columnist Eugene Robinson pushing “fashion critic” Robin Givhan on a mover’s dolly, and the Post‘s “innovations blog” editor, among others, poised on a hoverboard.
In keeping with the pledge to commemorate the old Post, there was an obligatory fawning reference to the current boss (“Even Executive Editor Marty Baron’s office will be about half as large as his old one, an obvious injustice given Marty’s emergence as a Hollywood hero in the new movie ‘Spotlight’ ”) and reassurances to readers that the exclusive Post zip code (20071) will remain the same. Thirteen reporters wrote essays on “objects they could never leave -behind.” One chose a “Thank God for the Washington Post” bumper sticker, autographed by (you guessed it) Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Above all, there was a lot about Watergate. Admirers of Laurence Sterne’s classic novel Tristram Shandy (1759) will remember the character of Uncle Toby, whose singular obsession was military fortification and main topic of conversation was the wound he sustained in the groin at the Siege of Namur (1695). The Post has long since achieved Uncle Toby status: The Watergate break-in occurred 43 years ago, and America has lived through seven presidencies since Nixon’s. But even now, under new ownership and ensconced in newer quarters, the Post remains fixated on its brief, transitory lodestar from the middle of the previous century.
The vanity of journalists is torturous enough, but the Post/Watergate fixation is a pain in the groin.
