This was a fascinating look not only into the modern newsroom, but into the mind of Jeff Bezos:

The origin of many of the hires could be traced to a phrase Bezos had used several times during his visit to the Post in September, when he said that the newsroom needed to "take advantage of the gifts the internet gives us."

...explaining that he was comfortable simultaneously running a secretive company and owning a newspaper, because he believed that "powerful minds can contain powerful inconsistencies."

"All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s"

This guys is full of gems. I'm not sure if that insight will be enough to save the Washington Post. It doesn't seem like any number of gadgets and no reasonable amount of money will be enough to save the newspaper industry. Jeff Bezos is one of the few people who could do it, but it's not clear whether he's fully committed to the challenge. I'll miss newspapers, but I bet they'll be replaced by something cooler.

So, disclaimer. Journalist turned web developer here. But I really don't think newspapers are going to go extinct, really ever. They are one of the only permanent records of history. Digital publications disappear like yesterday's rainclouds. There will always -- always -- be demand for physical products, because as humans we are very tactile. I think one of the root problems is in the quality of the journalism. Experienced journalists aren't staying in the game because there's no money in it. The ones who do stay in it are one of three things: crazy, passionate about the job despite the compensation, or not dependent on the income. There's a very limited group that can make it.

Add in the fact that there's an extraordinary amount of pressure on journalists to produce unrealistic product goals and you've got a recipe for a mass exodus, paving the way for a decline in the industry.

Next, consider that you've really never paid for news. You've always paid for the advertisements in the newspaper. That's the business model journalism is built on. So people don't want to pay for something they've historically not paid for.

So what you're seeing now are a bunch of experiments in journalism business models. After a while, you'll find several that really work. In fact, I think there are several that show promise now. The only problem is you need someone with the financial ability, vision and appreciation for the work to back the industry, and I think Bezos has those things.

The bottom line is that there is always going to be a demand for newspapers and news in general. In fact, people have been predicting the demise of the newspaper since TV was invented. But the bottom line is that newspapers just fill too many roles for them to ever become obsolete. Also, I need lining for my bird cage, so I'm gonna go grab a paper now.

>So, disclaimer. Journalist turned web developer here. But I really don't think newspapers are going to go extinct, really ever.

Still, particular newspapers have already gone extinct by the hundrends, and the trend is not showing any signs of reversing.

>They are one of the only permanent records of history. Digital publications disappear like yesterday's rainclouds.

Sure, but it's not like people, the average consumer etc, appreciates that fact or gives a damn about "permanently recording history". Most of them don't even print their digital photos, maybe 5-10 of the best ones, whereas they used to have albums with 100s of family photos back in the day. (And most don't even backup their digital photos).

That newspapers served as "permanent records of history" was a byproduct of them being available, dominant and profitable. Not something people specifically bought them and subsidized them for.

>There will always -- always -- be demand for physical products, because as humans we are very tactile.

Well, tablets are quite tactile too. And people have quit CDs and vinyl for mp3s and digital downloads/piracy.

Sure, there's still vinyl pressed. But it's small quantities and is consumed without any wider cultural context in the society, just by a tiny niche of music fans. And pressing vinyl is a $1000 affair -- so you can afford to press 300 copies for stores etc, where running a newspaper is extremely costly, and a print edition even more so. So the difficulty of continuing one is not the same as continuing the other (vinyl) niche tradition.

>The bottom line is that there is always going to be a demand for newspapers and news in general. In fact, people have been predicting the demise of the newspaper since TV was invented.

That's a common logical error. The belief that if people have been making the same prediction that didn't pan out, it will never pan out.

Not to mention: who said it didn't pan out? When radio/TV was invented, newspapers might not have vanished, but they lost a lot of their cachet as THE source of news and information.

The loss in readers was ofset by an increase in education and thus an increase in a middle class wanting to read newspapers. But that was a historical accident. The spread of the internet didn't see any such simultaneous increase of middle class or literacy (probably because they had already hit a ceiling during the seventies).

And TV, back in the day, had limited chanels and was live only. So not much of competition for the newspaper. Nowadays we have 200+ channel options, 24-hour news channels, Tivo and its ilk, and video on demand from the internet. Plus, written news on demand from the internet.

Plus, the numbers (of declining readership) are very different (and much worse) in the internet age vs the tv age.

Oh, I'm definitely not saying newspapers are hunky-dory. They obviously have plenty of challenges to overcome, and you're correct in that a whole slew of newspapers have shuttered their doors, and practically all have employed layoffs to combat declining revenues.

But the simple fact is that newspapers provide a valuable service and product. There just needs to be a change in business model, and there are lots of places trying new ones out. In many places, they're succeeding. Some have even reversed the downward spiral and moved back into profitable territory.

How is the information in newspapers currently preserved which is permanent and accessible (otherwise why archive at all) that a series of articles on the web could not also be preserved?

This is meant as an honest question as I remember microfiche and microfilm as the primary methods for preserving newspaper content. I assumed they were largely replaced with digital subscription based archives like lexus-nexus. And a digital archive can probably archive already digital information at least as easily as non-digital.

I know that libraries often keep physical newspapers like 5 or so years back but even after 5 years due to the quality of paper, ink, air, and occasional use. They are getting brittle and unable to be handled. News papers in their normal form were never intended to be permanent, hence why they were (are?) stored on microfilm or other archival methods.

There is a fourth type of journalist that stays. Those that are passionate about an opinion. And that's a bad thing, because it means the proportion of extremist opinion in media might increase.

> But I really don't think newspapers are going to go extinct, really ever. They are one of the only permanent records of history. Digital publications disappear like yesterday's rainclouds.

According to the totalitarian's guide (aka "1984"), malleability of the past is a feature, not a bug.

I disagree. Newspapers may continue to exist, but I can't see it for the reasons you list.

First off, the news isn't tactile. The paper itself is tactile but so is a tablet. Paper tactility is not more appealing except to people that are uncomfortable with tech. Short blurbs followed by flipping through 16 pages of mostly ads to find rest of article is a level of unfriendliness that is hard to match in online news, though some sites try their best.

On archival and permanence, you're confusing the content with the medium. Try to find a permanent article from the NY times. While you may be able to find the print form, more likely you will find it in a digital medium. It has been decades since print form was the system of permanent record. Articles were being digitized in the 70s.

Online content isn't the same as online journalism. Even so there is an attempt to archive even the most obscure of online content (archive.org and waybackmachine). I doubt you can find an archive of a small town print newsletter. But you can on web publications unless they make efforts to block it.

>> "Experienced journalists aren't staying in the game because there's no money in it. The ones who do stay in it are one of three things: crazy, passionate about the job despite the compensation, or not dependent on the income."

You're right about this, but it's hardly news. Capital-J journalism, rather like fashion and other sexy New York industries, hasn't been a "real career" (e.g. one that will pay the bills) for decades. But it makes a splendid passtime for the children of inherited wealth.

Are you from the middle class or lower and want a byline? No problem---come to New York and live here without getting paid for a half-decade until we give you a real job (still with laughably small salary).

There is market for quality journalism. Vox.com is doing quite fine. And a lot of people are ready to pay just not at current NYtimes paywall levels. My threshold is 1$ per week or month.

The Economist's subscriptions are growing and their online offering is apparently profitable. Their strategy is simple: assume the reader is smart, write well and use appropriate humour.

They're profitable because it's an expensive magazine read almost exclusively by high net worth individuals. Their subscription numbers are sub 2 million worldwide.

Correct. I don't understand your point though. Mine was that they are a profitable news source with a discernable strategy.

Yea, I agree--

how many papers can survive with that strategy though? Our family has subscriptions to the WSJ and Economist, but we have no plans to subscribe to either the NYT, SFC, or the Post. If this is the only demographic that can be profitably targeted with this strategy, then only a few can survive.

It's not just the question of how much. The NYT doesn't have a plan where you can subscribe and share with your whole family -- if they did, and it was similar to what the cost of buying and sharing a paper used to be, I'd subscribe. (This is a problem with things like Kindle accounts as well, so I don't know if following Amazon's lead will solve it.)

That's an excellent idea; I wonder why they don't do a family sharing plan.

Do you think that the sharing would significantly impact the overall number of subscribers? Obviously you're of the opinion that the price point could be raised to compensate, but I'm not even sure the overall number would drop a significant percent.

I doubt it has much effect on subscribers. I suspect many simply share the password.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/vox-media-vent... Vox Media is apparently at break-even after taking a ton of VC, but not profitable yet.

For something that is 4 months on the market - break even is fine for me.

Okay, I read the OP and decided to give 'The Washington Post' another chance.

So, I started reading an article there. It made a claim but gave no data or references. So, the article failed standard high school term paper writing standards. So the 'content' was not solid information but something else. Tilt.

So, apparently The Washington Post is still the same old 'journalism' I've screamed about for years. So, for me, done.

If the 'new' Washington Post is just more of the same of old 'journalism', then I see no great reason Bezos should work to spread it around the US or the world instead of just inside the DC beltway.

So, for me, Bezos wasted his money. Sorry, Jeff.

I was originally very excited by the Bezos takeover. As the article states, though, not much has changed from a journalistic perspective... yet. I'd love to see the Post become a contender of outside-the-Beltway content. When Ezra Klein bailed to start Vox, I found myself reading the Post less and less. If nothing else, this article makes me think that soon something exciting might come to the Post.

there is a crazy yin/yang quality to bezo's face that makes him look simultaneously like a crazed diabolical genius and a thoughtful zen master at peace with himself and the universe. The right side of the portrait being the diabolical part.

Almost looks like he's had a stroke – if Steve Jobs could keep his cancer and liver transplant secret for a while, how long could Bezos? Doing a Google image search, there definitely seems to have been a significant change, sometime after the original Kindle intro.

The changes if any are not obvious. I say that as somebody who scanned the print version over breakfast today.

All I've noticed is more clickbait. http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/

Know More is a pre-Bezos product. Bezos took over on 10/1 and know more was launched on 10/7. Meaning planning and development on Know More must've started before Bezos' control.

I don't think there's been much change to the print version. Most of the changes seem to be a bid to grab some of the Gawker/HuffPo/etc. online market in the news-esque blog sector. More infographics, making deals with some high-traffic blogs to bring them inside the fold (e.g. the well-known libertarian legal blog volokh.com was rebranded as a WaPo blog), that kind of thing.

Are they getting rid of Jennifer Rubin yet?

I wonder if this is Bezos doing what he normally does, vertically integrating--Amazon Newspapers?

I was under the impression that this was Jeff's own side-project and he had no intention of integration with Amazon

Obviously, The Post will be delivered by Amazon drones.