The Washington Post is coming to grips with a 10% drop off in circulation over the past 2 years, prompting a “self-examination” meeting on the issue. Apparently, newspaper reporters seem to labour under a misconception that readers can see them.
Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. met with hundreds of newsroom staffers yesterday to outline management’s latest attempts to combat declining circulation. However, the more intense discussion at the meeting involved diversity at the newspaper, as several minority staff members lamented that a white man recently was chosen over a woman and a black man as the paper’s new managing editor.
[…]
“We’re crushed,” said national reporter Darryl Fears at the meeting. Fears, who is black, organized two meetings of African American staffers in recent days in response to Bennett’s promotion. “A lot of our worst suspicions were confirmed about the ability of African Americans and other minorities to rise to the highest level of the best papers in the world,” he said.
(Note to Fears – if you can deal with the recognition that comes with promotion, check with the Bush administration.) *
In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper’s design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics.
The paper will undergo a redesign to make it easier for readers to find stories. It is considering filling the left-hand column of the front page with keys to stories elsewhere in the paper and other information readers say they want from the paper, which they often consider “too often too dull,” Downie said.
“Newspapers should be fun and it should be fun to work at one,” Bennett said.
Ah yes, the intellectual mismatch dilemma. Those WaPo folks are just smarting themselves out of readership.
