Get it Out There

How does being publisher of The Washington Post, where you are now, differ from where you were at Politico and your role there?

It's different in a couple of ways. One, Politico was a startup, as you mentioned. The Washington Post is over 140 years old. At Politico, we had no legacy. We were building our legacy, which was fun. The Washington Post, we've got this deep, rich legacy of investigative reporting, some of the most impactful journalism in the history of our country, the Watergate reporting.

At least 47 Pulitzer Prizes.

Yes, that's right, well, we're actually up to 63 now. But if you look at the kind of reporting that's been done for 140 years and then you get up to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. And I'll tell you one thing that's interesting, most employees at The Washington Post were not even born when Watergate took place. But it's part of the legacy that they inherit, that they stand on the shoulders of those who did that work. Politico was also it was smaller, it was more regional in Washington and The Washington Post, we are really focused on much more of a global audience. Both were fun, but just fun in different ways.

So what did you enjoy more?

I enjoyed them both for what they are. I'm enjoying exactly what I'm doing right now. I used to tell people before that I had the best job in journalism when I was CEO of Politico and running a television group. And now I believe I have the best job in journalism as publisher of The Washington Post.

And how is leading a bigger, older, more established organization like The Washington Post different from running something nimble and startup like Politico?

Well, we have to treat, even though it's a much larger organization, it's been around a lot longer, we have to treat it as a startup. We have to focus on this constant transformation because I tell our employees, it doesn't matter whether this is your first day out of journalism school or if you're a decades-long seasoned veteran. Your entire career in journalism is going to be about change. We don't know what we're doing next year at this time, but we know it won't be the same thing we're doing right now, because people's consumption habits, the gifts of technology, are giving us new ways constantly to reach readers and provide the type of content that readers want. So it is a process of constant transformation. People say, are we out of the woods yet? And I say, the woods don't end. We will never be out of the woods because they'll always be a need for further transformation.