As forecast in my last update the revamp of people and products at the Washington Post under new CEO William Lewis has merged into the fracas over his role in defending News Corp from hacking claims
Peter, the fact that he reached out to you to raise the issue about your last newlsetter and also has been reported to have tried to pressure NPR's media reporter not to cover that in exchange for an exclusive is Sunak-ian in terms of bad optics. He doesn't have the same relationships in Washington that he had in London, and the print journalism culture is very, very different than the UK. Taking cheap pot shots at David Folkenflik at NPR by calling him an activist is only going to make it worse. David is well-respected and attacking him will only deepen the perception that Lewis' soul belongs to Murdoch not to the Fourth Estate. Somebody needs to take Lewis's shovel away. Yes, transformation and culture change is difficult, but this is an own goal. He can't say that he respects the church-state divide while policing his image this aggressively, and that's naught to do with business transformation. He looks and acts like a man with a container ship full of skeletons to hide, and that is blood in the water to any journalist.
It is a great pity that it has started this way. The issues over his role in the hacking clean up were always going to come to the fore. His radical shakeup of the Post has many merits but it is now derailed by this other stuff. (Let's also remember he worked in the US for the FT doing an amazing job as M&A reporter and led Dow Jones as CEO for several years. He is not an ingenue about the way things work in US media and newsrooms which have a sense of themselves as virtuous, ethical, and protected from commercial pressures.)
Fantastic summary and insight Peter. Cheers.
Thanks Bernard, I just updated it in fact but suspect I will leave it and move on to another article if I need to stick my nose into this again.
Peter, the fact that he reached out to you to raise the issue about your last newlsetter and also has been reported to have tried to pressure NPR's media reporter not to cover that in exchange for an exclusive is Sunak-ian in terms of bad optics. He doesn't have the same relationships in Washington that he had in London, and the print journalism culture is very, very different than the UK. Taking cheap pot shots at David Folkenflik at NPR by calling him an activist is only going to make it worse. David is well-respected and attacking him will only deepen the perception that Lewis' soul belongs to Murdoch not to the Fourth Estate. Somebody needs to take Lewis's shovel away. Yes, transformation and culture change is difficult, but this is an own goal. He can't say that he respects the church-state divide while policing his image this aggressively, and that's naught to do with business transformation. He looks and acts like a man with a container ship full of skeletons to hide, and that is blood in the water to any journalist.
It is a great pity that it has started this way. The issues over his role in the hacking clean up were always going to come to the fore. His radical shakeup of the Post has many merits but it is now derailed by this other stuff. (Let's also remember he worked in the US for the FT doing an amazing job as M&A reporter and led Dow Jones as CEO for several years. He is not an ingenue about the way things work in US media and newsrooms which have a sense of themselves as virtuous, ethical, and protected from commercial pressures.)