{"id":18219,"date":"2016-11-18T15:43:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T20:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/the-washington-post-a-journalistic-mashup-of-woodward-and-bernstein-with-buzzfeed\/"},"modified":"2016-11-18T15:43:18","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T20:43:18","slug":"the-washington-post-an-innovative-force-in-the-digital-news-industry","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/the-washington-post-an-innovative-force-in-the-digital-news-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"The Washington Post: An Innovative Force in the Digital News Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last three years, The Washington Post (or \u201cthe Post\u201d) has successfully transformed itself from a regional, D.C. area print newspaper into a national digital media company. So how did the Post make this dramatic transition and move up in the pack of national news providers? With help from a somewhat surprising partner, Amazon.com founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos. In October\u00a02013, after a constant downward decline in average daily circulation and ad sales, the Post was acquired for $250 million with Jeff Bezos\u2019 personal funds [1]. Bezos bought the paper with the intention to reinvent the once 7th<\/sup> largest daily newspaper in the U.S. by ushering the Post into the digital age.<\/p>\n

The story of the Post is not just a story of a single newspaper, but rather a reflection of the print industry as a whole. Newspapers have struggled to adapt to the new digital realities of today\u2019s information age. The internet has dramatically changed the way consumers receive information; readers now expect real-time news and updates across all of their digital platforms at all times. The print industry has been unable to keep up with these rapidly increasing consumer demands resulting in a constant decline in print readership and ad sales over the last two decades. From 1985 to 2014, paid daily circulation of newspapers in the U.S. fell from 62.8 million to 40.4 million (Exhibit 1) [2]. Print advertising revenue of U.S. newspapers plunged from $47.4 billion in 2005 to $16.4 billion in 2014 [3]. Specifically, the Post\u2019s average daily circulation dropped 38% from 2004 to 2013 [4]. It was evidently clear that the prior print only newspaper business model was no longer relevant with the news consumption habits of the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

\"Exhibit<\/a>
Exhibit 1 [2]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The 2013 take-private of the Post initiated a complete overhaul of the paper with a significant focus on growth through the investment in technology. In their efforts to take the Post digital, the following key changes were initiated [5]:<\/p>\n