Katharine Weymouth
Katharine Weymouth Says The Washington Post Needs 'Fundamental Change'
The Washington Post's publisher Katharine Weymouth sent out an email to her staff this morning declaring that the business model for the paper would have to undergo a "fundamental change."
First, they're going hyper-local! Washingtonpost.com is going to be recast itself as a local news and information site for people who live in or near the Beltway.
On washingtonpost.com, we will need to up our efforts to cover breaking news, and to use video in that coverage, if video is how our viewers wish to follow the story. We must also make our local readers’ lives easier by increasing the practical utility of our site, and make the paper and washingtonpost.com go-to places for local information such as entertainment listings, weather and traffic, job postings, real estate and auto listings, and other classified services and marketplaces. We must make it possible for local consumers not only to find the kind of practical information that can aid a purchase decision, but make it possible for them to complete many of these transactions on the site itself.
The memo is short on specifics on how they're going make all these big changes but Ms. Weymouth is articulating the philosophy she began to tease out with us back in July.
Her full memo after the jump: read more »
The Morning After: Washington Post Plans New Post-Election Web Site
Editors and publishers are already taking a look beyond Election Tuesday. They're thinking about one key thing: How do you keep readers on their Web site?
The Washington Post is creating a new blog. Here's a memo from Marcus Brauchli:
All,
With Washington about to face its first major government transition in eight years, we're preparing to launch expanded, deeper and more
sophisticated coverage of the central institution in this town, the federal government. Through a new web feature and expanded coverage starting next year in the newspaper, we'll dedicate space and reporting resources to the people, the processes and life within the federal workforce.
The New Media Religion: 'Platform Agnostic'
It's probably inevitable that in these brutal times for news-gathering operations, a new lexicon would take hold to describe the baffling challenges of the industry.
One phrase we're hearing a lot lately is "platform agnostic."
The phrase seems to have been around for some time now actually, to judge from a Nexis search on the string of words. It appears first in the Nexis database in 1991, but in terms of annual use doesn't break the double digits until 1996, when the phrase appears 29 times. Then the word seems to have its big break, leaping from 64 uses in 1999 to 158 in 2000. read more »
