In Chimes at Midnight Orson Welles plays Shakespearean Sir John Falstaff. On a cold and untimely night, the fire crackles in the fireplace of a tavern where the Prince of Wales, under the patriarchal influence of John Falstaff, spends most of his time drinking and carousing with prostitutes, thieves and other criminals, and is Then when a rural judge, an old friend of Falstaff, says to him sadly, “What things we have seen, Sir John!”
After reading the 548 pages of the first book by Martin Baron, Marty, former editor of The Washington Post (2012-2021), one has the same feeling because Collision of Power, the story of a newspaper in the times of Trump and Bezos, has overtones of classic tragedy.
Marty, 69 years old, son of Israeli immigrants, shy and taciturn journalist, loved and respected, defender of Julian Assange, who speaks Spanish, had a small private office, a face of few friends and a brilliant career as a newspaper editor, He lived the last eight years of his life as a journalist at the head of a legendary newspaper. Hired by the Graham family, a few months later he learned that the Post had been bought or, rather, sold for $250 million, to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
Baron was editor of the now-moribund Miami Herald, where he covered the story of Elián González, and of the controversial Boston Globe, which in 2002 denounced the abuse of minors in the local diocese. He won a Pulitzer for that investigation that was made into a film called Spotlight, a bitter success when he left an editorial office in which he experienced the dismissal of 40% of his journalists.
He came to Washington to “save” the newspaper and soon, “what things have we seen!”, he found himself with a newspaper for sale, an aging newsroom, and a new owner who, it was said, bought a toy for him at a bargain price. to lobby, something that he denied with actions and words: “I come to manage it as a business, not as a charity.”
He promised to improve the technological and digital infrastructure of the newspaper and on his first two-day visit he found that the call for editorial board meetings was made by hand with a percussion triangle connected to the interior public address system, and when he met with the journalists the microphones did not work…
There were an expressionless Marty, the terrified retiree Ben Bradlee, and a Watergate survivor like Bob Woodward in the front row. Those who expected Bezos to enter like an elephant in a china shop were pleasantly surprised: the owner of Amazon answered all their questions smiling and happy for two hours. He assured them that he would invest in resources, managers and journalists, but that journalism was responsibility of them, promising to hire more “content creators than managers.”
The story now published by Martin Baron coincides with the bad news that the Post will offer early retirement to 240 of its 2,500 employees (including 1,000 journalists) and that they expect losses of 100 million dollars this year. Reasons? Overly optimistic expectations for advertising revenue and paid subscriptions according to some sources fell more than 20% from the three million they had when Marty left the newspaper.
The book is very well written, without any major revelations, except for a picturesque secret dinner at the White House with Bezos, three Post executives, Donald Trump, Melania and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. For two and a half hours, Trump did not stop talking and complaining about how he was treated by what he had described as “the worst newspaper in the world.” Dinner (cheese soufflé, battered sole, and chocolate cake) was, Baron writes, “a waste of time.”
To both Trump and his journalists, Baron always said the same thing: “We’re not at war, we’re at work”, but this “we’re not at war, we’re working” did not prevent conflicts inside and outside the newspaper. . The first battle occurred when Marty refused to publish the famously false Russian dossier on Trump. The second run-in was with the iconic Bob Woodward who wanted to denounce a controversial Trumpist judge as a “deep throat” in one of his books. The editor of the Post refused, reminding him that these confidentiality agreements were sacred, even if that Supreme Court justice was a scoundrel. The third was a lost battle: preventing his journalists from being belligerent on social networks. Finally, Marty recognizes that despite the ten Pulitzers he won at the Post, he failed in managing racial and gender conflicts within the newsroom.
If we had to summarize Martin Baron’s journalistic philosophy and his greatest obsession, it is the need to believe that objectivity is as necessary as possible. He worries me a lot, he has said, that the opposite is said and explains that we all expect objective doctors and scientists, and that we should also expect it from journalists. That is why it is very interesting when he vindicates the work of Walter Lippmann (“objectivity is not neutrality”) and quotes Dean Baquet, former editor of The New York Times: “One of the greatest crises of our profession is the erosion of reporting.” .
When asked if he hoped Trump would read his book, he replied: “No; and I don’t think he has read his either.”