Does the Washington Post Want to Be BuzzFeed?

I’m excited to let that later this 12 months we might be launching a brand new division of the newsroom fully devoted to raised serving audiences who wish to devour and pay for information otherwise from conventional choices. This third newsroom might be comprised of service and social media journalism and run individually from the core information operation. The purpose is to offer the tens of millions of Individuals — who really feel conventional information isn’t for them however nonetheless wish to be saved knowledgeable — compelling, thrilling and correct information the place they’re and within the fashion that they need.

That is not a ton to go on — and a Submit PR rep declined to remark additional — and there are some primary questions left unanswered right here. (For example — what precisely is “social media journalism?” Making TikToks? Writing tales about TikToks? Makings TikToks about TikToks? The entire above?)

Nonetheless, it is fairly clear that Lewis, put in by Bezos final fall, has surveyed the prevailing Washington Submit 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 might be one thing else.

It is attainable that some type of subscription could also be a part of the brand new factor — word Lewis’ reference to “pay[ing] for information otherwise.” Nevertheless it positive feels just like the purpose is to make information and news-adjacent stuff that reaches a a lot greater viewers than the Submit does at the moment, utilizing social media platforms, and to monetize that spotlight with advertisements.

And if that sounds acquainted, it is as a result of we noticed a number of that within the final spherical of digital media, the place corporations like BuzzFeed and Vice (and Enterprise Insider, the location you are studying proper now) connect themselves to Fb and its rocket trajectory. The issue was that when Fb’s objectives diverged from publishers’ objectives, the publishers have been left by the aspect of the highway.

Which is not to say that operating a big, largely free, advertising-based digital media firm is a assure for failure. It might nonetheless be attainable to tug that off, particularly in the event you can preserve your prices low (Whereas Lewis’ word 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 supplied a non-answer, based on an worker who listened to the assembly.) The UK’s Day by day Mail, as an example, has constructed a really giant enterprise with free, clickable headlines.

It is also cheap for a brand new supervisor to indicate up on the job, assess that the previous approach wasn’t working, and wish to make a dramatic pivot. And simply because many publishers are more and more counting on subscriptions as an alternative 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 Submit, which can presumably proceed to behave just like the previous Washington Submit. And there is the brand new, unnamed model of The Washington Submit, which can function very otherwise.

And whereas Lewis can count on to have some type of synergy between the 2 operations — his present advert gross sales workforce, as an example, might be telling themselves the brand new operation will give them the flexibility to achieve a special set of shoppers — that may’t go that far. If this factor works, it is going to be as a result of he is discovered learn how to function two newsrooms, with two completely different objectives, in an atmosphere that is so difficult that it is taxing the endurance of one of many world’s richest males. Good luck with that.