That appears to be what the paper’s management has introduced, utilizing completely different phrases. Right here they’re, through its CEO/writer, Will Lewis:
I’m excited to let you realize that later this 12 months we will likely be launching a brand new division of the newsroom completely devoted to raised serving audiences who need to eat and pay for information in another way from conventional choices. This third newsroom will likely be comprised of service and social media journalism and run individually from the core information operation. The purpose is to present the hundreds of thousands of People — who really feel conventional information will not be for them however nonetheless need to be saved knowledgeable — compelling, thrilling and correct information the place they’re and within the type that they need.
That is not a ton to go on, and there are some fundamental questions left unanswered right here. (For example, what precisely is “social media journalism”? Making TikToks? Writing tales about TikToks? Makings TikToks about TikToks? All the above?)
Nonetheless, it is fairly clear that Lewis, put in by Bezos final fall, has surveyed the prevailing Washington Put up enterprise technique — run a newspaper with nationwide ambitions and a subscription-based income mannequin — and concluded that it did not work. So the brand new, yet-to-be-named factor will likely be one thing else. (A Washington Put up PR rep says that in the mean time, the plan is for the brand new newsroom to publish all of its work on the Put up’s present web site and apps.)
It is attainable that some form of subscription could also be a part of the brand new factor — notice Lewis’ reference to paying for information “in another way.” Nevertheless it positive feels just like the purpose is to make information and news-adjacent stuff that reaches a a lot larger viewers than the Put up does immediately, utilizing social-media platforms, and to monetize that spotlight with adverts.
And if that sounds acquainted, it is as a result of we noticed numerous that within the final spherical of digital media, the place corporations like BuzzFeed and Vice (and Enterprise Insider, the positioning you are studying proper now) connected themselves to Fb and its rocket trajectory. The issue was that when Fb’s objectives diverged from publishers’ objectives, the publishers had been left by the facet of the street.
Which is not to say that operating a big, principally free, advertising-based digital-media firm is a assure for failure. It might nonetheless be attainable to tug that off, particularly in case you can hold your prices low. (Whereas Lewis’ notice additionally mentions “embracing AI to assist,” it is price noting that he was requested about staffing plans at an all-hands name on Monday and offered a nonanswer, in line with an worker who listened to the assembly.) The UK’s Day by day Mail, for example, has constructed a really massive enterprise with free, clickable headlines.
It is also affordable for a brand new supervisor to point out up on the job, assess that the previous manner wasn’t working, and need to make a dramatic pivot. And simply because many publishers are more and more counting on subscriptions as a substitute of social media doesn’t suggest they’re proper, both.
The extra regarding a part of Lewis’ plan is that he now has two plans: There’s The Washington Put up, which is able to presumably proceed to behave just like the previous Washington Put up. And there is the brand new, unnamed model of The Washington Put up, which is able to function very in another way.
And whereas Lewis can count on to have some form of synergy between the 2 operations — his present advert gross sales workforce, for example, will likely be telling themselves the brand new operation will give them the power to succeed in a unique set of shoppers — that may’t go that far. If this factor works, it is going to be as a result of he is found out how you can function two newsrooms, with two completely different objectives, in an atmosphere that is so difficult that it is taxing the persistence of one of many world’s richest males. Good luck with that.
Replace: June 3, 2024 — This story was up to date with an announcement from a Washington Put up spokesperson.
