Greetings from Los Angeles, welcome to the weekend, and welcome back to In the Room. Tomorrow marks the start of the most ambitious tournament in the history of soccer, a.k.a. the most popular sport in the world. I’m not going to get back on my soapbox about the underwhelming marketing strategy, but I strongly encourage you to watch… on DAZN (sigh). In tonight’s issue, news and notes on the latest developments at The Washington Post. Editor Matt Murray is commemorating his one-year anniversary at the beleaguered paper with yet another attempt to rally the troops behind Will Lewis’s plan. But, um… what is the plan? 🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, Julia Alexander and I waded into the chaos surrounding WBD’s breakup and what it means for HBO and CNN. We also discussed Apple’s underwhelming developers conference and how Google’s A.I. “overviews” are bleeding the media business. Then, Lauren Sherman joined us to chat about new Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci and the future of that once-august magazine. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen. Also mentioned in this issue: Jeff Bezos, Roger Goodell, Rupert and Lachlan, Will Lewis, Matt Murray, Brian Rolapp, Ronna McDaniel, Carrie Budoff Brown, Adam O’Neal, and many more… Let’s get started…

Rupert’s mini Sun Valley: Rupert Murdoch entertained Vice President J.D. Vance at his ranch in Montana earlier this week, a visit that spawned several sensational spot stories—in Politico, the AP, The Daily Beast, etcetera—though all of them were scant on details about the reason for the trip. Here it is: Every summer, Rupert hosts a gathering for Fox Corp. executives at the ranch, which he picked up for around $200 million from the Koch family a couple years ago. And he always invites a few bold-faced names to come speak to the group—a mini Sun Valley for the Fox front office, if you will. His son Lachlan, also in attendance, hosts a similar event every year for Fox and News Corp. execs at his home in Bel Air.

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Rolapp to PGA Tour: Brian Rolapp, the chief media officer at the NFL, is leaving to become C.E.O. of the PGA Tour, a move my partner John Ourand previewed earlier this week in his essential private email, The Varsity. The news is all the more notable since Rolapp was seen as a possible successor to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “Rolapp’s 20-plus years at the NFL have been marked by massive growth,” John wrote. “It’s no wonder Rolapp, who’s been a loyal soldier for two decades, is interested in running something.” But, according to John’s sources, Rolapp’s move doesn’t preclude him returning to the NFL—if Goodell ever retires.
Carrie, the sequel: Carrie Budoff Brown, the former Politico editor who’s spent the last four years overseeing NBC News’s political coverage, is returning to her alma mater as executive editor in Brussels—a move that I long anticipated. It’s a nice homecoming for Carrie, who had a strong reputation with Politico staff but struggled to gel with some of the talent at NBC—especially after she and NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein tried to hire former R.N.C. chair Ronna McDaniel as a contributor, igniting a memorable mutiny from Chuck Todd and the entire roster of MSNBC anchors. Carrie is better suited to this sort of work, and the Brussels assignment establishes clear lanes between her and the princely Alex Burns, who was recently promoted to run North America, and the core Washington report.
And finally…: Earlier this week, I wrote about the dismal fate that awaits CNN after the Warner Bros. Discovery split, which will include significant layoffs, diminished resources, and persnickety indignities: shittier offices, fewer perks, and more scrutiny of the T&E. As one CNN insider was quick to remind me, “This is already happening.” And, indeed, several CNN sources have griped about a lack of editing resources, stricter expense budgets, and, in some cases, positions that remain vacant for months after a layoff or a departure. Get used to it, guys. You may even pine for these days in the future.

And now, the main event…

The Low Post

What’s changed at The Washington Post amid this endless and ostensible period of transformation and renewal? Almost nothing, which is either part of a master plan to turn the Post into the Amazon Marketplace of news, or just more inertia and mismanagement at America’s allegedly third-most-important newspaper.

Dylan Byers

On Thursday, Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray stood before his journalists and tried to offer a rallying cry for the paper—which, as I’ve endlessly documented, has been enduring one of the bleaker chapters in its long and storied history: annual revenue losses in the hundred millions, subscriber flight, talent defections, an identity crisis, a divisive C.E.O., and an absent owner, etcetera. “The reality,” Murray said, “is that if we want The Washington Post to thrive, it isn’t enough to say that we are here just to produce high-quality journalism, or we are here just to hold power to account. We have to be here to produce high-quality journalism that people engage with.” This was a kinder, gentler version of the message that Will Lewis, the aforementioned C.E.O. and noted wide boy, had tried to deliver just over a year ago, when he very memorably told his charges: “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.” That line, of course, went over about as well as you’d expect. And while Lewis was entirely correct, that jeremiad retrospectively marks the unofficial beginning of the Post’s current civil war.

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Whereas Will had admonished, Matt sought to channel his inner Patton, and inspire and motivate: “We are the fucking Washington Post!” he said, somewhat out of character. “We can tell ourselves we are the fucking Washington Post all day. But if we are not performing at that level, we are not getting that far outside of this room. And that’s unfair, because the work we are doing is really great.” (Credit where due: Lachlan Cartwright also had a readout of Murray’s remarks in his Breaker newsletter on Thursday.)

The Plan

The fact that Murray still needs to give a speech like this suggests the Sisyphean effort required to move Post staff past their old ways. Reading between the lines, it’s clear he has heard from far too many journalists who think their sole obligation is accountability journalism on a print-friendly schedule, and who still won’t deign to concern themselves with the audience behavior and subscriber data—in other words, the fact that this is a business. Lewis and Murray aren’t willing to tolerate those who won’t row in their direction—and indeed, as I’ve reported, the Post recently offered voluntary buyouts to longtime staff who aren’t willing to get on board with “the plan.” At the same time, the recurrence of this messaging one year on suggests an enduring ambiguity about what “the plan” actually is—or if one even exists. Recall, when this saga began over a year ago, the working theory was that Lewis would use a “third newsroom” as a pretext to lay off a large chunk of staff and rebuild with outside hires and acquisitions. And yet, one year on, he hasn’t acquired anything, has made only a few hires—a new Opinions editor, Adam O’Neal, a 33-year-old Economist reporter who’d previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, was announced this week—and has effectively stopped telegraphing his intentions to the newsroom. So… what are his intentions? As the Times recently reported, Lewis’s chief strategy officer, Suzi Watford, has laid out an absurdly ambitious goal of reaching 200 million “paying users.” Given that the Post currently has less than 3 million subscribers—and that the Times, this industry’s benchmark of success, has less than 12 million—this target suggests either some elastic pricing mechanism, a quixotic reimagination of the business, or evidence that lead is seeping into the groundwater on K Street. (Maybe it’s all three, honestly…) To the extent he thinks all that much about it, groom-of-the-moment Jeff Bezos presumably envisions a future Post more akin to Amazon Marketplace than traditional journalism. Indeed, the Post’s reported plan to license opinion pieces from third parties suggests the paper is pivoting to more of an aggregation engine than an editorial force. A future Post, according to these tea leaves, seems like a mashup of Medium, Substack, Craigslist, and YouTube. One wonders if Matt and Will are struggling to translate the vision of a galaxy-trotting billionaire to a newsroom of practical and cynical journalists who just want to beat the pavement and make deadline. Either way, it’s a concept that seems sketched on the back of a yacht napkin. One of the truisms of this moment, of course, is that it’s hard (if not impossible) to fix the Post—even for Jeff Bezos.

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