The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Truth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street

Fir­ing back at the New Republic’s Gabriel Sher­man, Dana Mil­bank at the Wash­ing­ton Post is spot on when he says the death watch on the Post news­pa­per is pre­ma­ture. I’ve given my own two cents on sur­vival strate­gies.

That said, Mil­bank needs to remem­ber that the Wash­ing­ton Post Com­pany’s pri­or­i­ties are less jour­nal­is­tic and more business-oriented than in the Water­gate days.

Although the news­pa­per division’s out­look may have improved, its rev­enues are just a frac­tion of the total—18 per­cent in 2008. Could man­age­ment pull the plug some­day to focus on Kaplan? The mat­ter isn’t just how well the Post news­pa­per will do. It’s also whether the com­pany could fare still bet­ter with money invested in activ­i­ties such as Kaplan, the big show. Notice that graphic from the par­ent company’s Web site? The Post image is just one of four, and as for Newsweek, also shown, it is hardly rolling in cash.

Granted, the par­ent com­pany is rais­ing div­i­dends from $8.60 to $9 a year—a major point that Mil­bank makes. But maybe this is sig­nif­i­cant in the wrong direc­tion for the Post news­pa­per. Why didn’t the money for the 40-cent boost go instead for online activ­i­ties and other jour­nal­ism to help L Street com­pete with the New York Times and oth­ers (chart is from Alexa)? And should the Post have even con­sid­ered buy­ing back stock, an encour­ag­ing sign as Mil­bank sees it, when news-related activ­i­ties have been hurt­ing? I’m root­ing for the Post news­pa­per to thrive, and I still believe it can in the end, with the right strate­gies from within and from the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion. Just what counts for “right,” how­ever? The best jour­nal­ism for read­ers or max­i­mum prof­itabil­ity for share­hold­ers of the par­ent company?

Related: Post Com­pany annual repot (PDF alert) and a recent SEC report.

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