Front page for Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Washington Post
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the newspaper. For the John Phillip Sousa march, see The Washington Post (march).
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | The Washington Post Company |
| Publisher | Katharine Weymouth |
| Editor | Marcus Brauchli |
| Founded | 1877 |
| Headquarters | 1150 15th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C., United States |
| Circulation | 545,345 Daily 764,666 Sunday[ |
| ISSN | 0190-8286 |
| Official website | washingtonpost.com |
Perhaps the most notable incident in The Post's history was when, in the early 1970s, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American media's investigation into what became known as the Watergate scandal. The newspaper's reporting greatly contributed to the resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon. In later years, its investigations led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.[2] The newspaper is also known as the namesake of "The Washington Post March", the 1889 march composed by John Phillip Sousa while he was leading the U.S. Marine Band;[3] it became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze.[4]
Since Leonard Downie, Jr. was named executive editor in 1991, The Post has won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than half of the paper's total collection of 47 Pulitzers awarded. This includes six separate Pulitzers given in 2008, the second-highest record of Pulitzers ever given to a single newspaper in one year.[5] The Post has also received 18 Nieman Fellowships, and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards, among others.
General overview
The Post is generally regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers,[citation needed] along with The New York Times, which is known for its general reporting and international coverage, and The Wall Street Journal, which is known for its financial reporting. The Post has distinguished itself through its political reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress, and other aspects of the U.S. government. Unlike the Times and the Journal, it does not print a daily national edition for distribution away from the East Coast—although a "National Weekly Edition" combines stories from a week of Post editions.[6] The majority of its newsprint readership is in the District of Columbia, as well as its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia.
The Post is one of a few U.S. newspapers with foreign bureaus, located in Baghdad, Beijing, Berlin, Bogota, Islamabad, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Kabul, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Nairobi, New Delhi, Paris, and Tokyo.[8] In November 2009, it announced the closure of its U.S. regional bureaus — Chicago, Los Angeles and New York — as part of an increased focus on "political stories and local news coverage in Washington."[9] The paper has local bureaus in Maryland (Annapolis, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, Southern Maryland) and Virginia (Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, City of Richmond, and Prince William County).[10]
As of September 2009, its average weekday circulation was 582,844, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, making it the fifth largest newspaper in the country by circulation, behind USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. While its circulation (like that of almost all newspapers) has been slipping, it has one of the highest market-penetration rates of any metropolitan news daily.[citation needed][update]
History
[ Founding and early period
 |
| Washing Post Guilding |
Wilkins acquired Hatton's share of the paper in 1894 at Hatton's death. After Wilkins' death in 1903, his sons John and Robert ran The Post for two years before selling it in 1905 to John Roll McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer. During the Wilson presidency, The Post was credited with having made the most famous newspaper typo in D.C. history according to Reason magazine; The Post tried to report that President Wilson had been entertaining his future-wife Mrs. Galt, but instead wrote, erroneously, that he had been entering Mrs. Galt.[ When John McLean died in 1916, he put the paper in trust, having little faith that his playboy son Edward "Ned" McLean could manage his inheritance. Ned went to court and broke the trust, but, under his management, the paper slumped toward ruin.
Meyer-Graham period
The Washington Post was purchased in a bankruptcy auction in 1933 by a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, Eugene Meyer, who restored the paper's health and reputation. In 1946, Meyer was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law Philip Graham. |
| Washing Post Guilding |
Times, established in 1982, has been a local rival with a circulation (as of 2005[update]) about one-seventh that of The Post.
The Monday, July 21, 1969, edition, with the headline "'The Eagle Has Landed' — Two Men Walk on the Moon."
Her tenure is credited with seeing The Post rise in national stature through effective investigative reporting, most notably to ensure that The New York Times did not surpass its Washington reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandal. Executive editor Ben Bradlee put the paper's reputation and resources behind reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, in a long series of articles, chipped away at the story behind the 1972 burglary of Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel complex in Washington. The Post's dogged coverage of the story, the outcome of which ultimately played a major role in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, won the paper a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
In 1972, the "Book World" section was introduced.[14] It featured Pulitzer Prize winning critics such as Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda, the later established his career as a critic at The Post. In 2009, after 37 years, "Book World" as a standalone insert was discontinued, the last issue being Sunday, February 15, 2009.However, book reviews were still being published in the Outlook section on Sundays, and in the Style section the rest of the week, as well as some reviews posted online.
In 1980, The Post published a dramatic story called "Jimmy's World",[ describing the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, for which reporter Janet Cooke won acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize. Subsequent investigation, however, revealed the story to be a fabrication. The Pulitzer Prize was returned.
Donald Graham, Katharine's son, succeeded her as publisher in 1979 and in the early 1990s became both chief executive officer and chairman of the board. He was succeeded in 2000 as publisher and CEO by Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr., with Graham remaining as chairman.
Post Graham period
In February 2008, Jones was named chairman of the newspaper, and Katharine Weymouth became publisher of The Washington Post and chief executive officer of Washington Post Media, a new unit that includes The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com.The Post was slow in moving to color photographs and features. On January 28, 1999, its first color front-page photograph appeared. After that, color slowly integrated itself into other photographs and advertising throughout the paper.
In 1996, the newspaper established a web site, washingtonpost.com.
The paper runs its own syndication service for its columnists and cartoonists, The Washington Post Writers Group.[citation needed]
The Post has its main office at 1150 15th St, N.W., and the newspaper has the exclusive ZIP code 20071.[citation needed]
On July 7, 2008, it was announced that former The Wall Street Journal editor Marcus Brauchli would become the paper's top editor, succeeding Leonard Downie, Jr. in September.
On January 29, 2009, The Post announced that it was dropping Book World as a separate Sunday section and moving its coverage to the Outlook and Style sections. Deputy editor Rachel Hartigan Shea was named the new Book World editor, replacing Marie Arana, who stepped down on December 31, 2008 after accepting an early retirement offer earlier that year.[
On November 24, 2009, The Post announced that is was closing its remaining national bureaus, noting, "We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience."Almost a year later, the paper cited its local focus as a reason for running its first-ever front page advertisement: the Capital One ad was being run to draw attention to the rebranding of Chevy Chase Bank, a bank Capital One bought in 2009. According to the Post's vice president of advertising, the page one advertisement is a "very local, useful-information-for-our-readers type of campaign."
Political stance
| This article or section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective. (June 2009) |
The Post's editorial positions on foreign policy and economic issues have seen a definitively conservative bent: it has steadfastly supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, warmed to President George W. Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security, opposed a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from the Iraq War, and advocated free trade agreements, including CAFTA.[citation needed]
In "Buying the War" on PBS, Bill Moyers noted 27 editorials supporting George W. Bush's ambitions to invade Iraq. National security correspondent Walter Pincus reported that he had been ordered to cease his reports that were critical of Republican administrations.
In 1992, the PBS investigative news program Frontline suggested that The Post had moved to the right in response to its smaller, more conservative rival The Washington Times, which is owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate owned by the Unification Church which also owns newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The program quoted Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the conservative activist organization the Moral Majority, as saying "The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would determine what was news and what wasn't news and they wouldn't cover a lot of things that went on. And The Washington Times has forced The Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn't cover if the Times wasn't in existence." In 2008, Thomas F. Roeser of the Chicago Daily Observer also mentioned competition from the Washington Times as a factor moving The Post to the right.
On March 26, 2007, Chris Matthews said on his television program, "Well, The Washington Post is not the liberal newspaper it was, Congressman, let me tell you. I have been reading it for years and it is a neocon newspaper"] It has regularly published an ideological mixture of op-ed columnists, some of them liberal (including E.J. Dionne, Ezra Klein, Greg Sargent, and Eugene Robinson), and some on the right (including George Will, Marc Thiessen, Robert Kagan Robert Samuelson, Michael Gerson, and Charles Krauthammer).
In November 2007, The Post was criticized by independent journalist Robert Parry for reporting on anti-Obama chain e-mails without sufficiently emphasizing to its readers the false nature of the anonymous claims. In 2009, Parry criticized The Post for its allegedly unfair reporting on liberal politicians, including Vice President Al Gore and President Barack Obama.
Commentator Glenn Greenwald has called its Op-Ed page the "leading outlet for neoconservative and related right-wing advocacy
