There’s some money to be had in subscription. There’s way more to be had in brand recognition and blind trust. Owning something like WaPo means that when a newer and more adventurous outlet publishes “Amazon drivers caught running over babies,” you can publish “No we didn’t, trust us, were WaPo” and when people read the article from the smaller outlet, they’ll feel it’s less credible.
Owning the narrative is power and a money-printing machine.
Yeah, maybe. It seemed like he was mostly leaving it alone to do some pretty serious journalism up until this point, but maybe he was just being very judicious with when he would intervene. Or maybe he was just distracted with other things and didn’t care. What you’re saying would make sense as a reason to have it, maybe even to keep it while it decays into a mockery of its former good thing.
I think he left it alone because he didn’t need it. It was an investment and he sat on it until he suddenly needed it again. Well, here we are.
Analogy: a knife doesn’t increase much in value over time and certainly isn’t the most powerful weapon. But when people start to forget that you have a knife and what knives can do, your knife suddenly becomes incredibly valuable when someone says they’re about the punch you in the face.
There’s some money to be had in subscription. There’s way more to be had in brand recognition and blind trust. Owning something like WaPo means that when a newer and more adventurous outlet publishes “Amazon drivers caught running over babies,” you can publish “No we didn’t, trust us, were WaPo” and when people read the article from the smaller outlet, they’ll feel it’s less credible.
Owning the narrative is power and a money-printing machine.
Yeah, maybe. It seemed like he was mostly leaving it alone to do some pretty serious journalism up until this point, but maybe he was just being very judicious with when he would intervene. Or maybe he was just distracted with other things and didn’t care. What you’re saying would make sense as a reason to have it, maybe even to keep it while it decays into a mockery of its former good thing.
I think he left it alone because he didn’t need it. It was an investment and he sat on it until he suddenly needed it again. Well, here we are.
Analogy: a knife doesn’t increase much in value over time and certainly isn’t the most powerful weapon. But when people start to forget that you have a knife and what knives can do, your knife suddenly becomes incredibly valuable when someone says they’re about the punch you in the face.