Member Newsletter
I wanted to share another thought on the Post’s travails. I’m chagrined that a friend had to make the point for me since it’s a point I should know as well as anyone. It’s not like there’s not a ton of money to be made on journalism in DC. The fact that it’s one of the few spaces in the U.S. that has spawned a series of successful media startups over the last fifteen years testifies to that — Politico, Axios, Punchbowl and more. Indeed, it was veterans of the Post who branched off and launched the first two and in many ways ate the Post’s launch before Bezos came into the picture.
As we’ve discussed many times here, the DC advertising and events market is sui generis in the U.S. media space. There’s tons of money and it tends to go to publications. The reason there’s so much money is that that ad market is really a subset of corporate America’s government lobbying business. It’s not consumer advertising. Some of it is loosely brand advertising. But it’s really advertising and event sponsorships through which corporate America — and to a lesser extent activist groups — communicate with and attempt to influence the people who control the state — people on Capitol Hill, people in the executive branch, people in the broad para-government that exists in and around the Capitol. That’s the money that funds all those new and newish publications.
So why didn’t the Post make a play for that money? The first answer is that they did and they do. They’re one of the key incumbent players. But they’ve never played that hard for it or that well for it. Those other publications tend to get those dollars. At some level I think the Post has always seen that business as a touch beneath them, at least as a primary focus of the business. And it is a challenging business to be in and not get dirtied up in the process.
But it raises a broader strategic question about and for the Post. The Times is now the big national general-interest newspaper. That’s not just an opinion. It’s objectively the case when you look at subscribership numbers and the durability of its business in different news environments. The Journal is up there too. But the Journal’s core has always been as a business news company. That’s its focus. It’s people in that world who feel they need to subscribe. They have lots of secondary subscription businesses that play in that space. The point is they have succeeded in the early 21st century by remaining focused on their core competency and niche even though they are also major players in the hard news and political news spaces. But the Post hasn’t really done that. As the dominant newspaper in the nation’s capital it has an inherent politics and government focus. But it seems mainly to see itself as competing with the Times, the dominant, incumbent player who it probably cannot dislodge.
“Dislodge” is probably the right word. We don’t entirely understand the contours and possibilities of the media world we currently operate in. Can there be a handful of big national newspapers? The Times and the Journal both seem to be succeeding at that. But as noted, the Journal operates in a specific industry niche. That’s its anchor. It’s not clear to me there can be another general interest national paper in addition to the Times. But that seems to be what the Post has been attempting to do. It may simply not be possible. And it’s a question why they should try when they have an industry anchor and focus which is very natural to the brand.