Pity reporters in the Washington Post newsroom.
Where once they hung out with colleagues, gossiped, and read The New Yorker, the internet and rush to post stories has crushed that culture and now it’s all work, work, work.
“Nothing’s like that anymore. You’re on duty all the time,” said the paper’s former top editor and current vice president at-large editor, Leonard Downie.
New Post owner Jeff Bezos wants reporters reading on computers, not from printers. AP Photo
Maybe worse: New owner Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame, is banning paper printers some use to print out stories and sourcing.
In a talk at a Washington, D.C. public library, according to a write up from Inside Sources, Downie revealed that a memo to staff said: “Stop printing things out, because there’s going to be no room for it. … Get used to reading on a screen.”
Discussing the business, it was his comments about how the internet, and drive to post stories fast, is changing newsroom culture that jumped out. Here’s how Downie described it, according to the Inside Sources account from his Thursday talk:
“Literally, when I was a reporter in the newsroom in the 1960s, there came a time of day in the late afternoon when you kind of sat around,” he said. “You read magazines. You read The New Yorker. You gossiped with the people sitting around you. Then around 5:30 or 6:00, you wrote your story, because the deadline was coming up. Nothing’s like that anymore. You’re on duty all the time.”
He also rapped Politico, birthed by two of his former chief political staffers, according to the report. “Throughout his library talk, Downie reserved his more negative comments for publications other than his own. He knocked the Post’s political reporting competitor Politico in vague terms, saying the outlet was ‘changing what it’s doing and giving up some of its advantage.'”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
