A
year ago, Jeff Bezos stunned the media world with the news that he was buying
The Washington Post for $250 million. With his jumble of businesses, the
founder of Amazon seemed an unlikely buyer for a newspaper that was losing
money. But given moves he has made to try to reinvent the media business
(Amazon, the Kindle - and Kindle Singles e-books and Amazon Studios, units that
give creators new outlets for their work), expectations that the billionaire
entrepreneur would transform the Post into a hotbed of experimentation were
high. Now flush with resources, the paper has begun hiring again and introduced
a number of initiatives. Here's what happened, and what hasn't:
National
growth
In March, in a de facto effort to take the brand national, The
Washington Post lowered its paywall to give free Post access to subscribers of
more than 100 local papers, including the Dallas Morning News and Minneapolis
Star Tribune. Post president Steve Hills told the Financial Times that digital
subscription services such as Amazon Prime and Spotify could one day come
packaged with Post content, although that hasn't materialized yet.
Overseas
expansion
The Post also has spread its wings aboard, adding a sales team in
London, to leverage its international audience. The jury's still out on whether
it can expand beyond its association with coverage of D.C. politics, though.
Circulation
Digital
is growing in importance. As of March 31, Monday-Friday print circulation
averaged 399,757, down from 431,521 in September 2013. But online audience is
up 43 percent to 32.3 million monthly uniques in June, per comScore desktop and
mobile combined.
Editorial
expansion
The Post has grown the editorial operation. Despite the loss of
high-profile talent like Ezra Klein, who took others with him to Vox Media
including Dylan Matthews and Melissa Bell, the newsroom is growing. As of May,
the Post had hired 50 new people in various newsroom functions, launching blogs
like Storyline, Morning Mix and Post Everything and expanding the Sunday
magazine. This hasn't made up for the 200 jobs that were eliminated in buyouts
in recent years, but it's a welcome start.
Technology
The
Post has long embedded technologists in the newsroom, and that's expanded under
Bezos. Today, 25 engineers that work with the newsroom enable them to develop
new "Snowfall"-like story formats and mine data for enterprise
stories.
Comments
The
Post partnered with The New York Times and Mozilla to create an online
community commenting system, which is in "advanced stages of design,"
said Shailesh Prakash, vp of digital product development and CIO.
Experimentation
A
reflection of Bezos' experimentation ethos, the Post opened a
software-development lab in New York in March, WPNYC, to improve the website
and develop new ad products.
Advertising
Native
advertising has been a core of the Post's ad revenue strategy since it launched
its Brand Connect program in March 2013. It has since allowed advertisers to
borrow features of article templates to make them look more like editorial. The
Post also has begun running native ads on mobile, a nod to readers' shifting
behavior to the smaller screen. New ad units are only starting to come, though;
first among them is one called Infinity, a full-page unit that can run across
desktop, mobile and tablet without the advertiser having to change the
creative.
User
experience
The paper announced a website redesign, but it's a long way from
being completed. Chief among the goals is improving the article experience;
article pages are cleaner, and photo galleries have better resolution and
sharing features. But article pages are still marred by Google AdChoices and
take too long to load - four to five seconds to load - which the Post wants to
cut to two to three seconds. "Speed is something we need to get better
at," Prakash said. "We've made progress, but we've still got a long
way to go."
Content
management
Explaining his decision to leave the Post for Vox Media, Klein criticized
the paper as lagging in technology and for being tied to a daily-journalism
publishing model. Here again, the Post is just getting started. Its new blog
Storyline allows for storytelling in different formats and to be told over days
and months. A new CMS that will build in analytics to inform and guide news
staffers as they post content is still in the works. And the holy grail of
being able to personalize content to readers based on their point of entry and
interests is still a ways off - as it is for most publishers. (Lucia Moses)
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