Paper Boy

What was your first job out of college, out of curiosity and how did you get it?

Well, not that there was any strategy behind this, but my first job is, before I was out of college, my first job was delivering newspapers. So my first job, and my current job has been in a newspaper. I just knew I could make some money after school with my friends and we would deliver them on our bikes, the local newspaper in the hometown where I was. And it was a good experience, actually, because you were responsible. You had to be there every day. If you didn't show up, somebody didn't get their newspaper, and they would be unhappy with that. So you had to be responsible. You would have to collect at the end of the month. You'd have to come and collect and say your money's due for the newspaper. And they even had us out selling. We'd go house to house trying to sell subscriptions. So those were good skills to learn as a junior high student. And I progressed from there to delivering pizza, different product, still delivery. And then I went on to law school and my first job after that was being a lawyer.

I find it so ironic that one of your first jobs was a newspaper delivery boy and now you run The Washington Post.

I have a little, very small, modest trophy that I'm very proud of. It's in my office, it says "San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Boy of the Year" from when I was in eighth grade. I show it to our delivery people when they come in and say, you know, I got to do this once. You still do it. You still get to do it.

Was that for delivering the most papers? What was that for?

Well, I think it's because I showed up on time and delivered a lot of papers, and sometimes if someone was sick, you'd take their route. And I took a few people's routes for them. So I got the award.