-You've told the newsroom that reporters have a spine
and a soul.
How do we translate that in our work
so that people, you know, know that about us?
-They're gonna have to see it in the work that we actually do.
They have to see that we're willing to, uh,
to gather the facts, to tell the truth
regardless of the pressure that we are under.
♪♪
The soul means that we understand what our mission is,
we understand what our purpose is.
We're not going to waver in pursuing that.
It's not just something that we talk about
but something that we actually do.
And that also means that we don't cave under pressure,
that if we've done our job, if we've been thorough,
if we've done our research and we've done everything right,
then we tell people what we've discovered
and tell it to them in a direct, unflinching way.
No ifs, ands, or buts.
-Other papers have wealthy investors,
but they have not had our track record of success --
of editorial success, subscriber support, revenue generation.
Was there a rule that you had for yourself
to invest resources properly and strategically?
-Well, I think the most important thing is
when Jeff Bezos acquired us,
he really changed our strategy for The Post.
We went from being for and about Washington
to focusing on the national market
and even the international market.
He felt that we had that opportunity,
because here we were in the nation's capital.
We had the name The Washington Post,
which could be leveraged to a national
and even international level,
and we had this history and tradition
of shining a light in dark corners,
of accountability journalism going back to Watergate
that established what our identity was.
So we had all these advantages for going national,
and we had the opportunity because we no longer
had to distribute physical newspapers around the country.
The Internet, as he put it, had given us a gift.
And the gift was international and national distribution
at virtually no additional cost.
And so why did we suffer all the pain from the Internet
and not take advantage of the gift that it was giving us?
-When you came here, before the Bezos money, I mean, you --
you must have been drawn to the storied legacy
of The Washington Post
and what the Graham family had built and the Watergate legacy.
You know, looking at that old building
with the Washington Post logo --
What was it like to come into that space
and take over for the first time?
-Well, it's a heavy responsibility.
I mean, why did I come to The Washington Post?
Because it's The Washington Post.
Because of that history and that heritage and that tradition
and the kind of journalism that it had practiced
and the fact that it had held powerful people,
including the president of the United States, accountable.
And that's something that I had grown up with.
When I was in college, Watergate was taking place.
And so it had really informed my view of journalism.
I'm inspired by the people who came before me,
but I also recognize that a position like this
comes with a very heavy responsibility
to carry forward their legacy,
to run the paper in a way that --
I shouldn't say "paper" any longer,
because it's really a news organization
that's distributed in so many different ways --
and to run it in a way that was true to the legacy
and principles of those who came before me --
in fact, going all the way back to 1935,
when the core principles of The Washington Post
were established, the first one being
"to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained."
-I see some parallels in what you did at The Boston Globe --
sort of being the David versus Goliath,
fighting the Catholic Church
or trying to tell the truths to the big Goliath,
to The Washington Post and having to stand up
to the White House, to the Trump administration.
Did you feel parallels?
-There are parallels,
because these are powerful institutions
and powerful people.
The Catholic Church was the most powerful institution
in New England when I arrived.
It's not today, but it was then.
And we had an obligation to -- if we saw wrongdoing,
to expose that wrongdoing and to tell the truth
regardless of the pressures that might be put on us,
regardless of the reaction that it might engender --
regardless of anything, really --
regardless of any pressure, that we had to tell the truth.
And here we are in Washington, and core to our job,
being true to the First Amendment,
the idea of holding powerful people,
particularly the people who are entrusted
to govern this country, accountable,
that is core to our mission.
And so we found ourselves
holding the last administration to account.
And, um, and obviously we came under a lot of attacks,
we came under a lot of pressure.
But we understood what our job was,
we did our work,
and we dug out the facts, and we told the truth.
And that's what we're supposed to do.
-How do you implement the strategy
of being at work and not at war?
That's one of the sayings I think has resonated
for a lot of us here.
You know, we're not at war, we're at work.
How do you actually do that?
-Well, I think it means that we recognize what our job is,
which is to unearth the facts
and to put them in proper context
and tell the public what they need and deserve to know.
That's why we have a free press in a democracy,
is to tell the public what they need and deserve to know
and recognize that it's not an ideological battle.
This is not -- We're not fighting over an ideology.
We're not fighting against a particular personality
or a politician.
We're just doing our job of gathering the facts
and telling people what it is they need to know.
And there can be a tendency when you're coming under attack
to think that because one side is a combatant
that you need to be a combatant as well.
And I don't see it that way.
I know that there are other people who do see it that way.
When the president, on his first full day of office,
went to the CIA and said,
"You know that I'm at war with the media,"
my reaction was, "Well, I'm not at war with him,
but we are going to do our job."
And the fact that he says he's at war with us
doesn't mean that we have to be at war with him.
But we do have to do our work.
We do have to gather information,
find out what our government is up to,
explore who's responsible, look at its impact,
and then tell the public what they need to know.
And that's just the idea
of being focused on what our obligation is
regardless of who's in the White House.
-For the people who believe President Trump's rhetoric,
that the press is the enemy,
how do we reach out to them to engage them in reading,
watching, being a part of what journalism has to offer?
-Well, look.
I think there are several things that we can do that are helpful.
I'm not sure they are entirely going to address the issue.
But there are several things we can do that are helpful.
I think, first of all,
we have to talk a little bit more about who we are.
There's this perception that we are of a certain type,
that we fit a stereotype, that we're all from the elites,
that we all came from the East Coast,
that we all went to Ivy League schools or things like that.
It's just not true.
We have people on our staff who grew up on family farms.
We have people who are combat veterans.
We have people who came from evangelical homes,
some who were homeschooled.
All of that.
We have people from all different corners of America
and all different societies within the United States.
And we also have to be more transparent
about how we go about our work.
We have to show more of the documents that we rely on.
We have to show videos of events
that have taken place that we're reporting on
so that people can see for themselves what has transpired.
We have to talk more about our reporting process.
And then I would say, most importantly,
we have to cover people in every corner of this country.
We have to listen to them.
We have to hear what they're saying.
We have to understand their anxieties.
We have to understand their deepest concerns.
And we also have to understand their highest aspirations
for themselves and their families.
And that means people who are in rural America, suburban America,
urban America, every state, everywhere.
And they have to see themselves reflected accurately and fairly
in our coverage.
And so that's an obligation of ours,
and we have to be good listeners.
And we don't have to agree with everything everybody says.
Our reporting may not validate
the conclusions that they come to.
If we've done our reporting thoroughly, it may or may not.
But we do have to listen, and we do have to hear them.
-I talked to a young woman yesterday
who is thinking about being a journalist,
wondering how to get into it, how to start,
whether it's the career for her.
What would you say to a young person right now
who's trying to figure out if this is a good career for them,
if it's a sustainable career for 20, 40, 60 years,
that they should be, like, spending money
to get educated in to go into?
-I would say do it.
If you have a passion for it, you'll be good at it,
and you should do it.
It's true that this profession and this industry has undergone
enormous pressures, enormous disruption.
But we've also seen significant successes in our business.
And we're like other industries
that have gone through disruption
and then come through.
I think we have to remember that there is always going to be
a need for information in a democracy.
The citizens will need to know what their government is up to.
They'll need to know what other institutions are up to
that affect their lives.
They need to know what's happening
within their community, whether it's the police
or the school board or environmental issues
or the city council or the county commission
or you name it.
All of that, they need to know. And who's going to tell them?
Who's going to tell them what they need to know?
And it has to be a press, so there will be a press.
-Marty, before I leave you, our video team has noticed something
that others may not know about you,
which is you have a sense of humor.
You can seem very serious sometimes --
-Well, thank you so much.
-So, you agreed to be on a Washington Post TikTok
early on, when I think many people were still wondering
what the hell TikTok was.
How do you navigate, like, humor and humanity with, you know,
earning respect and creating a sense of confidence?
-Honestly, I don't know the answer to that,
but I thank you for actually discovering
that I have a sense of humor.
I really appreciate that.
My best friends say that I do
and that I'm also a very good audience
for people who have a sense of humor --
an easy audience, they say.
-We appreciate that. Yeah. -Absolutely.
I don't know. I mean, look.
I think we need to take our work very seriously.
I don't think we need to take ourselves so seriously.
And I think that's maybe where the difference comes in,
is that when it comes to the work,
we have to be very serious about it.
When it comes to ourselves, we should be humble,
we should recognize there's a lot that's humorous
in the way that we interact with each other
and who we are, with all our imperfections.
-Thank you for talking with us.
-Thank you. Appreciate it. -Yeah. Thank you.
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