My only significant beef with Marty (the name he seems usually to be known by) Baron’s memoir of his years running the Washington Post newsroom is with the title: Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post. I have a vague suspicion that the title may not have been Baron’s own preference; it sounds more like a marketing decision.
The emphasis on the three subject areas in the subtitle were reversed in the actual text, and “collision” doesn’t quite capture what often happens here: More like two or more sides lobbing rocks (or mud) at each other.
The text itself, though, is well worth the read, often insightful, sometimes braced with new and provocative information, lively and periodically inspiring. (I say periodically because Baron does admit to some downcast periods, often for good reason.)
Baron, who had editing history at other newspapers including the Boston Globe and Miami Herald before arriving at the Post, showed up just months before the paper changed hands from its long-time owners the Graham family to Amazon leader Jeff Bezos. He was there not long before arrival of Donald Trump on the national political stage, and during a period when many other newspapers nationally were in free fall. He had his work cut out.
As a regular reader of the Post in recent years, I can attest it has remained a powerful and often innovative news organization, navigating well some very difficult times. How that happened is Baron’s story, told from the perspective of one close to the center of events.
Inevitably, Trump is a part of that, and Baron opens with a new account of a dinner at the White House including top Post executives, including Bezos, and Trump. They all got through it intact, which seems a miracle given Trump’s many scrapes with the press generally and the Post specifically over the years. But in some ways, Trump is just part of the passing parade.
Bezos was more central to this story, and reasonably. For the many of us who have wanted a clear and reasonably detailed accounting of Bezos’ involvement with the Post, it can be found here. Baron generally is highly complimentary of Bezos’ ownership, and on the facts he set out for good reason. Bezos has helped fund major expansion of the paper (while keeping an eye on making it a free-standing and profitable business) and helped bring it into a stronger digital and marketing presence, while keeping hands off news and editorial decisions. (Baron is emphatic that has been the case, and other scattered reports over the years seem not to contradict that.) Bezos himself emerges here as a more likable person than you see in many other accounts.
Significant parts of the book include traditional-style newspaper stories – how the story was broken – and the changes that have crunched the paper internally. He does not stint on recounting the many staff conflicts over the years, notably later in his tenure, over how stories and personnel decisions relating to minorities were handled (one left to a major petition complaining about a specific news decision Baron made).
There is a through-line in this, though, and that’s Baron’s strong defense of traditional news reporting and editing. He makes a good case for “objectivity,” a word often defined s differently in so many people’s minds that I’ve thought it is worth discarding. Used as Baron uses – and defines – it, it means not the kind of inflexible “and the opposing side said” kind of mindless neutrality, but rather a dispassionate search for the truth, wherever that may lead. As he presents it, objectivity seems a completely worthwhile goal, as long as we’re clear on what is meant by it.
Baron’s perch was a unique one for watching the last discordant decade unfold, and a worthwhile one for reflection on it. Especially if journalism is – as it should be – a subject of concern to you.
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