Washington Post Signals Shift With a New Editor

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Washington Post Signals Shift With a New Editor
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: July 8, 2008


(Adrian Moser/Bloomberg News)
Marcus W. Brauchli has spent most of his career as an editor and overseas correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.

Signaling a generational change at one of the nation’s most influential newspapers, the new publisher of The Washington Post on Monday selected an outsider as the paper’s top editor. Marcus W. Brauchli, a former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, will become the executive editor of The Post on Sept. 8, at a time of great upheaval in the industry. At age 47, he is young enough to remain in place for many years, working alongside the publisher, Katharine Weymouth, who is 42 and has been in her job for five months.

He will succeed Leonard Downie Jr., 66, who has led The Post’s newsroom for 17 years, guiding it to numerous accolades, including six Pulitzer Prizes this year, the most in its history. But Mr. Brauchli (pronounced BROW-klee) and Ms. Weymouth take the helm at a time when The Post, like the newspaper industry as a whole, is buffeted by budget cuts, a shrinking newsroom, falling advertising revenue and declining circulation....

The Post is trying to meld its print and online news operations — something The Journal has already done — and that task is high on the priority list of Ms. Weymouth, the first Post publisher with direct control of its Web site. The two operations have been kept apart to a degree that is rare in the industry — the Web site even has a separate newsroom, in Virginia — which has bred duplication and turf wars. In a statement, Ms. Weymouth said that Mr. Brauchli’s experience at The Journal would “help us navigate the new world of media.”

Her decision to pass over candidates within The Post and hire Mr. Brauchli comes shortly into a tenure that has already made clear that she intends to shake up the venerable but financially troubled paper. She is in the fourth generation of her family to head the paper that her great-grandfather, Eugene I. Meyer, bought in 1933, and is considered the likely successor to her uncle, Donald E. Graham, 63, as chairman and chief executive of the Post Company, which also owns Newsweek magazine and the Kaplan educational business.

But her choice of Mr. Brauchli is a surprising one at a paper best known for its political coverage and inside-the-Beltway savvy. Some editors and reporters at The Post say that changing the leadership in the midst of a hard-fought presidential campaign is an unorthodox and potentially disruptive move....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/business/media/08paper.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

[marmar]

1. A Wall Street Journal editor?

I can see the RIGHTING on the wall.

[n2doc]

3. The Wa Po has been a right wing rag for a while now

Nearly every day they have an Obama attack article on their front web page. Or some tripe praising McCain.

[Common Sense Party]

6. I think people see what they want to see.

I know right-wing nuts who think the WaPo is basically Pravda.

[Common Sense Party]

2. I know what the editor does. What does the publisher do? n/t

[lurky]

4. CEO, basically.

Oversee all the aspects of the organization, not just editorial (printing, distribution, advertising, HR, legal, accounting, etc).

[Common Sense Party]

5. Gotcha. Thanks!

[Jade Fox 410]

7. Hmmmm...

Branching out I guess. FOX Newspaper