Marty Baron: Behind the Washington Post’s Demise

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast

Episode: Marty Baron: Behind the Washington Post’s Demise

Date: February 5, 2026
Host: Tim Miller
Guest: Marty Baron, former Executive Editor, the Washington Post; Author of "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post"

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Overview

In this incisive interview, Tim Miller sits down with Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post, to discuss the crisis engulfing the storied newspaper. The conversation centers on recent cuts, the decline in vision at the Post under Jeff Bezos, increased governmental and business pressures during Trump’s second term, and the chilling implications for American journalism and democracy. Baron offers a sharp, candid look back at his tenure at the Post, Bezos’s shifting priorities, and the deadly ills threatening robust, independent reporting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Washington Post’s Heritage and Recent Decline

• Baron's opening perspective on the layoff crisis:
  • The Post is "coming up on their 150th anniversary" and has a deep legacy of ambitious journalism, especially governmental accountability.
  • Staff cuts have left the newsroom smaller than when Bezos first bought it in 2013, marking a significant retreat from its mission.
  • Quote: “What I think is missing now is some clear contemporary vision for what the Post should be. They’re talking about a reset. It looks more like a retreat to me.” (04:15)
  • Baron worries about a diminished capacity to provide reasons for readers to turn to the Post.

2. Bezos’s Early Ownership: Optimism and Independence

• Initial optimism with Bezos (2013–2020):
  • "He wanted us to set a more ambitious course...He asked us to be national and international...to be fully digital" (06:15).
  • Significant investment, rapid staffing growth (+500), and six straight years of profitability followed.
  • Bezos defended the Post from Trump’s attacks and championed press independence, including resisting pressure over Amazon’s federal contracts.
  • Quote: “He never interfered in our news coverage. He didn’t. Not even about Amazon.” (09:04)

3. Trump Era, ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’, and Editorial Challenge

• Origin of the motto, and its resonance:

  • The now-famous phrase was Bezos’s idea (“He didn’t like to call it a motto. He called it a mission statement.”) (13:03)
  • It was intended to signify a global commitment to adversarial journalism, not as a slight against Trump, though that’s how it’s been read.
  • Memorable quip: “You don’t know many marketing people who say you should include death and darkness in your motto...We tried light, but it sounded too self-adulatory or cult-like actually.” (13:03)
  • The motto gained global recognition and has been widely imitated or mocked.

• Political pressures:

  • Jared Kushner personally lobbied for Baron’s firing after Russia-related reporting. Baron stands by the Post’s coverage:
  • Quote: “I’m very proud of it…Trump is suing the Pulitzer board for that coverage, but the reality is...Russians did intervene in that election.” (15:23)

4. Post-Trump: Business Failures and Strategic Drift

• Failed adaptation:

  • The Post was profitable in the Trump era, “demonstrated how to be profitable” (19:04).
  • Unlike The New York Times, which diversified (cooking apps, games, The Athletic), the Post failed to meaningfully innovate.
  • Declining search traffic (esp. from Google), social media, and the impact of AI were not robustly addressed.
  • Quote: “They keep talking about resets, they keep talking about innovation. And I want to see, well, okay, show me your innovation. And I don’t see much happening.” (32:00)

• Editorial shift – chasing a non-existent audience?:

  • Matt Murray’s memo critiqued the Post for writing for “one slice of the audience,” implying a pivot to appease Trump-friendly demographics.

  • Baron: “For a news organization with the history and heritage of the Washington Post, its aligned should be to the facts, wherever they lead… It’s not a matter of using a political calculus.” (24:16)

  • Tim Miller’s skepticism: “Where is the audience for hard news, MAGA hard news written— I don’t see it.” (25:48)

  • Baron sees danger in abandoning fact-based reporting for political positioning.

5. Bezos’s Priorities: Corporate Interests vs. Press Freedom

• Changing Bezos:

  • Baron suggests Bezos’s posturing has shifted as Blue Origin and Amazon seek massive federal contracts under Trump.
  • Quote: “I’m concerned that he’s prioritizing these other business interests over the Post...it’s made the Post’s financial predicament far worse than it needed to be.” (12:55)

• Conflict of interest exposed:

  • Citing a recent “nauseating” scene of Bezos welcoming Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to Blue Origin after the Pentagon expelled Post reporters:
  • Quote: “I doubt that Bezos spent a second taking Hegseth aside and saying, ‘That was wrong for you to do that’...I found it nauseating and very, very disturbing.” (34:06)

6. Eco-systemic Threats: Power, Leverage, and Capitulation

• Trump’s second term brings more credible threats:

  • Federal government contracts have become central leverage; law firms, universities, media all capitulate.
  • Fear among titans like Bezos and Disney of losing contracts and falling behind rivals (Musk, Ellison).
  • Quote: “So much of the economy, so much of our society is dependent upon the federal government...he’s [Trump] not hesitant to use that as leverage.” (39:19)

• Baron’s tough love on wealth and cowardice:

  • Tim: “You’re turning me into Bernie Sanders, Marty. If $260 billion isn’t enough…and so I’ve got to buckle to Donald Trump…” (43:55)
  • Baron: “I think it’s enough. But I’m saying that they don’t see it that way.” (44:13)

7. Where Do We Go from Here? Baron's Prescriptions

• Could the Post survive as a nonprofit?

  • Baron’s advice: Bezos should endow a billion-dollar nonprofit Post, governed by an independent board; remain committed to core values, embrace digital media and innovation. (46:25)
  • Quote: “I would love to see something like that...but they still need to be true to their core principles. You cannot give up your core principles and be successful.” (47:46)

• On metrics vs. mission:

  • Both agree that chasing clickbait and metrics is a dead end for serious journalism.
  • Baron: “You have to have a soul. You have to know what your soul is. You have to be faithful to your purpose in life. And once you abandon that, people know that you’ve done that and they abandon you.” (48:32)

• On stories not getting enough coverage:

  • Baron: “The corruption in this administration deserves a lot more attention than it’s received...A lot of people in this administration are seeing this as an opportunity to profit, and the First Family is right at the center of that.” (49:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Baron on the layoffs and loss of mission:

  • “They’re talking about a reset. It looks more like a retreat to me.” (04:15)

• On why Bezos changed:

  • “I’m concerned that he’s prioritizing these other business interests over the Post...and that’s what I’m worried about.” (12:55)

• On Jeff Bezos’s motives:

  • “I doubt that Bezos spent a second taking Hegseth aside and saying, you know, that was wrong...I found it nauseating to watch that and very, very disturbing.” (34:06)

• On media’s temptation for metrical and political shortcuts:

  • “Once you abandon [your soul and purpose], people know that you’ve done that and they abandon you.” (48:32)

• Baron’s prescription:

  • “I’d like to see them, I’d like to see it put into a nonprofit. I’d like to see Bezos say, okay, I’m giving you a billion dollars...You have capital to experiment and innovate. I think they would [win back subscribers].” (46:25)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:15 — Baron on the Post’s diminished vision and the implications
• 06:15-10:56 — The Bezos Years, newsroom independence, and expansion
• 13:03 — The birth of “Democracy Dies in Darkness”
• 15:21 — Russia coverage, Kushner’s pressure, and Baron’s pride
• 19:04 — Discussion of profitability, missed strategic innovation
• 24:16 — Baron rebuffs political calculus; facts must come first
• 34:06 — Bezos/Blue Origin meets Trump’s Pentagon; the “nauseating” alliance
• 39:19 — Trump’s economic leverage, Bezos’s fear, competition from Ellison/Musk
• 46:25 — Baron's nonprofit solution and future vision for the Post
• 49:37 — Last word on corruption in the current administration needing more coverage

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Tone & Takeaways

Baron is candid, reflective, but deeply troubled by the events at the Post and the wider trend of media capitulation under autocratic pressure. Miller, irreverent and incisive, provides sharp contrast and prods Baron on both business and moral foundations. The discussion underscores the gravity of the crisis facing American journalism, the corrosive effect of big-money influence, and the enduring—and endangered—importance of principled, independent reporting.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode is a sobering, illuminating look at what happens when press power, government power, and private wealth collide.

Transcript

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[Marty Baron]

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[Tim Miller]

All right. Hey everybody. We got a great show coming for you with Marty Baron and I was kind of annoyed that he waited till we stopped recording to make fun of me for the fact that he sees my clips on social media and I look like I just got out of bed. I'm just like, you know what? Okay. All right. We're in a different world. All right. I'm not buttoned up Woodward and Bernstein material. Sometimes I'm hungover in podcasting Let a man Live.

[Marty Baron]

But.

[Tim Miller]

But it was wonderful and I think will give us a lot of insight into the corruption that has led to the crack up at the Washington Post. And I think there's a lot of important themes that are related to that in addition to kind of the media gossip element of it. So stick around for that first. I just, I do want to flag about our live shows. Texas is going to be on sale pre sale for Bulwark subscribers. So become A subscriber to Bulwark plus at thebullork.com presale opens up today Thursday. Tickets will be open up to everybody on Friday. And if the Minnesota experience is anything to guide us, they're going to sell it quick. So go check those out. Reminder, we're in Dallas March 18th and Austin March 19th. Become a blur+subscriber to get that early access to tickets. Get the best seats in the house you can, get close to me, throw spitballs at me, et cetera. As far as Minnesota is concerned, we added the bonus show on Wednesday, February 18th. There are a couple hundred tickets left, so go check those out as well. All the proceeds from those two shows in Minneapolis are going to go to Second Harvest. Heartland is doing great work feeding people that are struggling with food insecurity because of all the nonsense happened in Minneapolis. So look forward to seeing you guys on the road in Minneapolis, Dallas or Austin. Up next, former executive editor of the Washington Post, Marty Baron. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show former executive editor of the Washington Post, author of Collision of Power, Trump Bezos and the Washington Post. It's Marty Barron. Thanks for coming on the show, Marty.

[Marty Baron]

Thanks for having me.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I think obviously I've brought you on to talk about the war in Ukraine. No, we're going to talk about Jeff Bezos doing self sabotage to his own newspaper for some reason. You put out a statement yesterday that was blistering about the layoffs and what is underneath them. And so I was excited to have you on to chat about that. Why don't you just give us your kind of top line thoughts and they'll kind of go into it.

[Marty Baron]

This is a paper with a deep heritage. It's about 150 years old. They're coming up on their 150th anniversary. It's been known for doing the most ambitious work for holding power to account, particularly government politicians at the highest possible levels. And now it will be a news organization that's severely diminished. I mean, they've gone through a round of cuts. But now the news organization will have fewer people than it had when Bezos actually acquired the post. And 2013, we had expanded tremendously over the years. He invested, he spoke forcefully and eloquently for our mission for the press in general. He resisted pressure at the time from Donald Trump, tremendous pressure, as a matter of fact. And now we're seeing something entirely different. And what I think is missing now is some clear contemporary vision for what The Post should be. They're talking about a reset. It looks like more like a retreat to me, and I'm worried about that because we need reporters on the ground in this country and in the Post zone community in the Washington metro area, but also around the world, and they're going to have fewer of them, and that means fewer reasons to read the Post.

[Tim Miller]

I want to go into kind of the present day in a second, but I just think it'd be valuable for folks who are not close observers of the media navel, like all of us that are in the media, to just kind of do a little bit of a backstory about how we got there. So when Bezos bought the paper in 2013, you were already executive editor at the time, is that right?

[Marty Baron]

I was. I started at the beginning of 2013. It was under the Graham family, as it had been for 80 years. And then it was announced that summer, about seven months after my arrival, that Bezos would acquire it. And then the deal closed at the beginning of October in 2013.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, so we're in second Obama term at this point. At the time, there were critics who were obviously worried that the paper was going to be corrupted. Bezos has a lot of interest in the government, and you were very kind of defensive of that, saying that he allowed independence. Just kind of talk us through your experience in that era. Like kind of pre Trump, like, right when he bought the paper.

[Marty Baron]

Well, I don't think I was defensive per se, but I think what I was trying to do is tell what really happened at the Post. And what really happened is that he wanted us to set a more ambitious course for the Post. He wanted us to be national and international. He asked us to be fully digital, as much as we could be, to be creative about that. We proposed a lot of initiatives. He funded them. Pretty much all of them succeeded. We then had six straight years of profitability, something like that. He kept investing. He didn't take the dividends. He put them in back into investing. We expanded. The staff grew from about 540 when he arrived to we were headed to about a thousand when I retired in February 2021. And he stood up for us. I mean, during Trump's campaign in 2015, when he himself, when the Post came under attack, and then he himself came under the attack, he said quite clearly and forcefully that that was no way for someone who aspired to be president to behave. He talked about the role of an independent press, and he stood by that. I mean, look, you may remember that Trump talked about doubling Tripling, quadrupling the postal rates for the delivery of Amazon packages, that sort of thing. It was numbers pulled out of thin air. Of course, he hadn't done a study of any sort and said that, you know, the Post was just a lobbying organization for. For Jeff Bezos, that it was a tax dodge. All this nonsense. None of it. None of it true. Not even close to true. And then toward the end of his administration, Trump's administration, he actually interfered to make sure that a big cloud computing contract with the Defense Department, $10 billion, did not go to Amazon, and it did not go to Amazon. And then there was a lot of litigation around it, and it was rebid and all this sort of stuff, but very complicated. But Bezos stood up to that. In fact, I mean, people forget. I mean, Bezos and Amazon, they filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department for the way that it awarded that contract, and they called upon Trump to actually be deposed. To be deposed. And they said that the interference by Trump was because of his animosity toward. Toward Bezos, because of his ownership of the Washington Post. Yeah, I thought that was all good. I admired him for doing. For doing that. I admired the support that he gave me. I admired the support that he gave my colleagues. I admired his support for the Post and its mission and for the press generally. And so what I did is I told it like it was. That's how it happened. And now I think what I'm trying to do is tell it as it is today, and it's different.

[Tim Miller]

I'm wondering why that is. Like, if you saw any signs back then, and you wrote in the book that one of the things Don Graham told Bezos when he sold it was basically that when you own the Post and the Post publishes something that makes somebody in power mad, they'll try to hurt you. I mean, did that sink in with him, do you think? I mean, at the time, did you have any conversations with him at the time that made you think that he was getting weak, need and all that? And I'm just wondering what those conversations were like in the first time, first time around.

[Marty Baron]

Well, first of all, thanks for reading the book. Looks like you did read it.

[Tim Miller]

You can tell when you're. When you're a podcast guest. If I'm going to be. I'm just going to. I'm just going to come clean because you're being candid. I'll be candid. I didn't make it all the way through. Okay. I've got a lot of book guests coming on, but I'M doing my best. All right, I'm paging. Thanks.

[Marty Baron]

Thanks for reading some of the book. Okay. Maybe a small portion of the book, whatever it might be. Any word you read, I'm grateful for. So, as I mentioned in the book, and you haven't gotten there yet, but the. The first substantive meeting we had with him was about our coverage of national security matters. So we had just come off the Edward Snowden Leaks that was hugely controversial. A lot of politicians and intelligence officials thought that we should have been prosecuted for that. We and the Guardian at the time, we won a Pulitzer for that coverage. But those were the most highly sensitive documents in the US Government at the time. But they're was a significant intrusion into the private information of American citizens, and we felt that needed to be published, and to this day, I believe it should have been. So he asked for a meeting about what our standards were. We told him what our standards were. He said he thought that should be codified. So we codified it. We wrote it down, and he reviewed it. This was done in coordination with our lawyers and our publisher at the time, Catherine Weymouth. And he reviewed it. He thought it was fine. He never, never interfered ever again, even though we did publish national security information subsequent to that. And he never interfered in our news coverage. He didn't. Not even about Amazon. I never heard from him about it at all. I mean, we had a reviewer who didn't like a single Amazon product, I have to tell you, or service, and he mocked him, you know, and I never heard a word from him. So that was good. I mean, I thought that was appropriate, and I appreciated that support and people and that he was willing to give us our independence. And so given that, that's what happened. That's what I wrote about in the book.

[Tim Miller]

You also have during this kind of changeover, when Trump wins, where you guys do the rebrand with democracy dies in darkness. You have that era, and there were some folks, I think, who thought, okay, is this a little cringe? Is it fake? Is this just window dressing to try to make him look better? But then during the first Trump term, whether or not you thought it was cringe, it was certainly legit that you guys were reporting in defense of democracy. And now with hindsight, some people look at it and wonder. I don't know how authentic Jeff Bezos feelings were about the tagline.

[Marty Baron]

They seemed to be authentic at the time, and he supported that with his subsequent behavior. As I said, he resisted the pressure from Donald Trump, called for Trump to be deposed. Know there were people when they lost the, the cloud computing contract for $10 billion. The joke in the, in the business was it didn't just cost him $250 million to buy the post, it cost him $10,250,000,000 to buy the post. And I once told him that joke and he laughed. He thought it was pretty funny. He's the one who wanted that motto. He didn't even like to call it a motto. He called it a mission statement. And he said that it was an idea that people would want to belong to. And what I'd like to see today and worry about today is that maybe that mission doesn't belong to him anymore or he doesn't belong to that mission. So I've been concerned about his behavior since Trump re entered the White House. And clearly I think Bezos was concerned about reprisals against the source of his wealth, which is Amazon, and then the object of his passion, which is Blue Origin Space Company. Both of them have significant contracts with the federal government. Amazon has a lot. Blue Origin would like to have many. And so I'm concerned that he's prioritizing these other business interests over the post. I don't happen to think that's quite the reason for the cuts or at all the reason for the cuts more recently, but it's something that has made the post financial predicament far worse than it needed to be. And that's what I, that's what I'm worried about.

[Tim Miller]

I want to get into that, but just I had to follow up on the question. Bezos wanted this the democracy dies in darkness motto.

[Marty Baron]

Yeah, he did. We spent two years on that, believe it or not. I was glad when it was finally over, we didn't have to talk about it anymore. That was a phrase that Bob Woodward had used for many years. It was sort of an adaptation of what a judge had once said. It was not in the context of Watergate really, but came well after that. And the judge had talked about democracy dying behind closed doors. We had tried a bunch of others. I think many of us were skeptical of that as a motto or mission statement. You know, you don't know many marketing people who say that you should include death and darkness in your motto. The very few. We tried light, but it sounded too self adulatory or sounded cult like actually. So we, we avoided that and we struggled with probably a thousand different options. And then finally, I think maybe an exasperation Basil said, well, let's just go with democracy dies in darkness. And I was fine, let's we don't have to talk about it anymore. And it was a huge hit. It was a real huge hit. And it got criticized in the way that you have suggested and in other ways. One person talked about it as our new goth vibe, but it was hugely popular. People can cite it all over the world. I've traveled all over the world. Everybody knows it. And that's what Bezos wanted. He did not want us to spend time coming up with a motto that nobody would ever remember again. Nobody cared.

[Tim Miller]

Well, it's kind of apt that it's come around to bite him a little bit. In that case. Just one other thing from that era I just had to ask you about, because speaking of books I didn't read all of, Jared Kushner wrote a very long memoir. And in that book, one of the things he says that he writes about is trying to force Fred Ryan to fire you and issue apologies from the Russia coverage. What was happening with that? What's happening with little Jared?

[Marty Baron]

He did try to get Fred Ryan to fire me. He was very unhappy with our coverage of Russian intervention in the election in 2016, and he was under investigation, and we reported that, and he was very upset over that. He got on the phone with Fred Ryan and complained about it. And. And then subsequent to that, after the Mueller report out came out, I think it was, he then called Fred Ryan, suggesting that we should apologize and that there should be consequences for this. And clearly he didn't say it explicitly, but that the consequence should be to. To fire me.

[Tim Miller]

How do you look back on that coverage now?

[Marty Baron]

I'm very proud of it. I made a very proud of it. I mean, Trump is suing the Pulitzer board for that coverage. But the reality is, and it's well documented in the Mueller report, that Russians did intervene in that election, and there were communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians. That doesn't mean that there was collusion or direct collaboration or conspiracy the way that it's defined under the law. But there was a lot of footsie going on. Trump openly welcomed Russia's intervention in the election. He did that. You know, he clearly did that. Just watch the video. And then there were other communications between people who were close to him and on his staff with the Russians. And Jared himself had actually proposed, after the election, he had proposed communicating with the Russians by doing it at the Russian Embassy in Washington so that it wouldn't be detected by people in the State Department. And we reported on all of that, and all of that was accurate, and it was validated by the Mueller report. And now that's not the Steele dossier. And I think we need to draw a distinction between the Steele dossier and it wasn't actually a dossier per se, but a bunch of reports that was commissioned by the Democrats. And that was a lot of unrealified.

[Tim Miller]

The Never Trumpers. Originally, it was the Never Trumpers that commissioned it and then kind of passed it on to the Democrats.

[Marty Baron]

That's right. But ultimately the Democrats inherited it. That's correct. So it was not verified and we didn't publish a word of it, even though we knew about it, because we weren't able to verify the allegations. And they were the sensational allegations that were in the Steele report. And then it was buzzfeed and CNN that actually published the content. And then the dam broke. And then Trump addressed it. And once he addressed it, we obviously had to say what he was talking about, but we never verified that. And that's different. Those are two different things. And I think it's really important to draw a distinction between those two. And we did draw a distinction between those two.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Because there's a small cottage industry of assholes who are obsessed with this. I should just extend and revise my remarks. When I said it was us that commissioned it, I meant the Never Trump community. It was not literally me or the Bulwark that were involved in that in any way. It was the Paul Singer crowd. They're all for Trump now. They're part of the Venezuela coup. So anyway, the people that commissioned that are now inside the house for that matter.

[Marty Baron]

Yes, yes. Well, you're intimately familiar with that, so.

[Tim Miller]

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[Marty Baron]

Something. Yeah, six years. Basically.

[Tim Miller]

Look, from my background, I'm a free marketer. I understand sometimes there's creative destruction and things. The market no longer is interested in a certain product and things change and things evolve. And you see some right wingers doing that critique right now of people lamenting the firings of the Post, saying, well, it was just they weren't running a good business. This is what happens. There have been firings in a lot of parts of our economy lately. But the distinction here is that the Post was making money during the first Trump term. The Post demonstrated how to be profitable. And it seems to me that the current leadership just made a decision to go a different direction that would make it unprofitable. What do you make of that assertion?

[Marty Baron]

Well, yeah, look, I mean, when Bezos bought it, he changed the strategy of the Post. The Post was primarily a regional news organization. It was focused on the Washington metro area with the exception of politics, where it covered the entire country. And Bezos said we needed to be national and we needed to be international. And, and then we needed to appeal to a younger audience because if we didn't cultivate a younger audience, we wouldn't have one in the future. And so he asked us to come up with a bunch of initiatives and we did come up with those, and he approved pretty much all of them. And pretty much all of them were successful. And we innovated like constantly. And people forget about that. I mean, in 2015, Fast Company magazine named us the most innovative media company in the world. In 2018, it did it again. It named us the most innovative media company in the world and by the way, the eighth most innovative company, period, in, in the world. And so there was a lot that we did at the time to adapt to the new, the different media Environment, of course, the media environment, as you all know, keeps changing, and it keeps changing at an accelerating pace. Your podcast is an example of that, of the kind of new media that exists today. Clearly, the Post needed to keep adjusting. There was a difficult period after Trump lost the 2020 election, although he doesn't acknowledge that, but he lost the 2020 election. And Joe Biden came in, and I think a lot of the public who had supported the Post and in its work, and particularly in holding Trump accountable, felt like, well, the threat's gone. We don't need to do this anymore. And how many subscriptions can I afford? You know, what we hadn't done is we hadn't prepared adequately enough for a Post Trump era, although I had warned my publisher at the time that we needed to do so, particularly as we observed what the New York Times was doing, which was diversifying in a very determined way away from news into other things. So putting tens and tens of millions of dollars into developing a cooking app that is very popular. Acquiring Wirecutter, or product recommendation service, where they make money through transactions. Starting their games initiative, which came later, but I was aware of, and I alerted my boss to that as well. That's been hugely successful, and that's where a lot of their growth in terms of digital subscriptions is coming from. And then more recently, acquiring the athletic, eliminating their own sports department, and basically putting sports coverage in the hands of the athletic. We didn't do that at all. We diversified, diversified a bit, but it wasn't at that scale. And so we fell behind, and that was a problem, clearly. It's true that the. The Post needed to adapt. It needed to change. These days, given the impact that AI is having on the business, which is dramatic. We've seen a decline in traffic from search engines, the primary one being Google, of course. But also prior to that, there was a decline in traffic from social media, from Facebook in particular. And so you have to adapt, and they should adapt, and I would encourage them to do that. But I haven't seen a lot of innovation. They talk about innovation. The publisher there has talked about innovation and the need for it. But I have yet to see an initiative that shows that he knows how to execute that. So I agree with people who say it should be a sustainable business. I agree with people who say they need to keep innovating and make some dramatic changes. But I didn't hear yesterday of any vision of that sort. I did not hear a contemporary vision for the Washington Post. I heard the word reset. I heard the word restructuring. But all I saw was retreat.

[Tim Miller]

I think that all of that is good analysis. Obviously, you're from inside the business. You understand how it works. And I think that if they made these firings in 2023, all of that would have been particularly apt. But they did it in 2026, after Trump was back. So, you know, while they hadn't adapted the original model of, you know, doing very dogged coverage of this administration that there's a lot of interest in, certainly could have been a patch on their problems, and they chose to go the other direction. There's Matt Murray, a top editor over there. In his memo yesterday, one sentence caught my eye. He said, we often write from one perspective for one slice of the audience, basically saying we're only writing for liberals or anti Trump folks and that they want to change that. And I just, like, think that's totally a wrong assessment. I mean, just from a business standpoint, if they think the thing they need to fix is, I don't know, be more accommodating to the party in power, where is the evidence for that? There's not really a successful newspaper that is doing soft on Trump coverage, hard news coverage, and that seems to be what they're trying to do. To me.

[Marty Baron]

Well, look, I mean, we live in a very polarizing time. There's no question about that. I think for a news organization with the history and heritage of the Washington Post, its aligned should be to the facts, wherever they lead. And a primary responsibility, perhaps. I mean, the primary responsibility of the. Of a news organization, particularly one like the Post, is to hold its government accountable, to find out what's actually happening in the government, to dig beneath the surface, to look behind the curtain, to do what the founders of this country expected of the press. The reason they provided for independent and free press in the First Amendment, which was to examine its public characters. And so that's what the Post has historically done. I mean, Watergate is, of course, a primary example of that. I think we did that well during the first Trump administration as well. And that's why we've got a lot of support from readers. We need to continue doing that. And it's not a matter of. I don't think one uses a political calculus. And for a news organization like the Post, I mean, there are many different kinds of news organizations, some more advocacy oriented, some leaning left. Right. What have you. But for the Post, I think it is, you know, you need to keep your eye on what's really important, and that is digging into what people of power in this country are doing because what they do can affect the lives of ordinary people and does affect the lives of ordinary people. And the single most powerful person in the world is the President of the United States. And so it's not a matter of using a political calculus in your news coverage. It's a matter of saying, are we fulfilling our responsibilities to unearth the facts that the public needs and deserves to know?

[Tim Miller]

And Matt Murray is saying that there needs to be a political calculus there. And he says we're only writing for one slice of the audience. I don't know how else to read that. So to me, what they proposed yesterday is we're going to fire a lot of people and come up with a new strategy. And the new strategy is we're going to try to appeal to an audience that I'm not sure exists. Where is the audience for hard news? Maga hard news written? I don't see it. Tucker Carlson said he tried to start that he wanted to create the New York Times to the right with a Daily Caller that utterly failed and they ended up doing opinion slop. Their stated strategy to me is trying to appeal to an audience that doesn't exist.

[Marty Baron]

Well, that may be right. I mean, you need to ask him about it. Maybe he'll, he'll agree to come on your, on your program. We'll see.

[Tim Miller]

But I mean, we're seeing. So you can speculate. We're seeing this with cbs. They're doing the same thing, Right. Washington Post and the CBS are basically doing the same thing, right?

[Marty Baron]

Sure. And I was about to mention cbs, and that's what concerns me about what's happening at CBS is that, you know, Barry Weiss has talked about. Well, we want to get the people who are, to the, who are center right and the people who are center left and all that sort of thing. And I don't believe you should use a political calculus in running a news organization of this, of this consequence and this size and this, this kind history, whether it's the Washington Post or cbs. I think the job is to be an ally of the facts and to be an ally of the truth. And, and you know, that's the mission that exists whether the administration happens to be Democratic or Republican. And that's the role that the Post has historically played. I know that the critics on the right say that's not the case, but the facts prove otherwise. I don't believe in using a political calculus like that. I believe saying, why do we have a free press in this country? It's, it's to keep watch on our government, whoever happens to be in government, and tell the public what it needs to know about how they're governing and not. I want to appeal to this segment of the political audience. I want to appeal to that segment of the political audience and to keep in mind some sort of political equation while you're doing that. I'd never did that. I wouldn't ever do that. And I don't recommend it for any news organization like the Washington Post.

[Tim Miller]

What would you say to right wing people who said, well, democracy dies in darkness was kind of trying to appeal to the left because democracy ended up being a left coded thing.

[Marty Baron]

Is democracy a left coded thing? Gee, I thought it applied to all of us. I thought that's kind of what we aspire to in this country and what we've talked about for these 250 years. I don't see it as a left coded thing at all. I mean, look, I mean, there were people on the right who, when we came up with that, they said that was, we were targeting the Trump administration, but that is just not true. We spent two years on that and not all of us were enthusiastic about death and darkness being in our motto anyway. So it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. And look, when Trump lost the election in 2020 and was out of office in 2021, and for four years thereafter, there were readers who contacted us saying, it's time to get rid of that motto right now. And we said, no, this is a motto that applies to whatever administration is in office at the time. And they've held onto that. And I think that's, that's good. I would just want them to be faithful to that motto, to keep faith with the spirit behind that statement.

[Tim Miller]

And also, I think, just for folks who can't remember because it is hard, it's like time is a flat circle here. But you guys did that in 2017. So it was four years before they sacked the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow democracy. So it ends up being pretty prescient in my view.

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[Tim Miller]

Little bit more on the capitalism side of this and what's actually happening there. You know, it is a little bit hard to be sympathetic to the idea that Bezos is losing money on the paper. When they spent $70 million on a Melania Mov, he had a $50 million wedding. He had a $500 million clock. There's a clock that costs $500 million. That's neat. I guess it's going to survive a long time.

[Marty Baron]

10,000 years.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, yeah, 10,000 years. That's neat. But that's not cheap. And he has the right to spend his money on whatever he wants. But I do think that when you combine that with what we're seeing from Blue Origin and other and I guess specifically what you're saying with the Melania documentary, it doesn't seem to me like these are just purely economic decisions.

[Marty Baron]

Right. Well, you know, I joked in the book that I thought with the 10,000 year clock he should give the Post the same kind of Runway he liked to talk about giving us Runway. And I thought maybe 10,000 years would be about right and he could afford it. That's true. On the other hand, look, I think that the Post should be a sustainable business. I think that's the only way to ensure your survivability over the long run. And it's the best protection you have, is that you actually make money doing what you're doing. I mean, Bezos said at the beginning, made clear at the beginning that he wasn't going to treat the Post like a charity. And I told the staff many times that I didn't think he should. I thought that was good because we needed to use the opportunity of his investment to create a sustainable model. Because if someday he decided to sell us, we'd be in terrible shape if we were not making money at the time. And so if he got tired of that charity, then we needed to make sure that we were on solid ground. And I really do believe that. I just don't happen to think that what they're doing right now is the path toward achieving that. And if I. If I heard from them some clear vision about what the Post ought to be and it made sense, if we were coherent, then I would. Might have a different view. But I didn't hear that yesterday, and I haven't heard it for the last several years. I mean, they keep talking about resets, they keep talking about innovation. And I want to see, well, okay, well, show me your innovation. And I don't see much happening. So I do believe it needs to be a sustainable business. Of course Bezos can afford it. I mean, it's worth 250, $260 billion at this point. It was worth about 25 billion a or 25 billion when he bought the post in 2013. And, yeah, he could afford to subsidize it forever, but I think it's a good idea for it to be a sustainable business, and I think they should work with that.

[Tim Miller]

That is crazy. He's 10x'd his net worth since he bought the Washington Post and all this other stuff.

[Marty Baron]

Yeah, the Post didn't really contribute to that multiplier effect, but to the extent that it subtracted from it, it wasn't by very much.

[Tim Miller]

That's got some French Revolution kind of vibes to me when he's gaining at that kind of scale during this period. Related to this, I'm sure you saw on Monday, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, calling it Secretary of War Now. He visited the Blue Origin facilities in Cape Canaveral. He was on his Arsenal of Freedom campaign. They also do some cringe branding over there in the Trump administration. It's a campaign for promoting military contractors. Bezos was there talking about how they're supporting the mission. And Hegsa said Blue Origin was going to do plenty of winning in securing government contracts. I mean, the conflict of that is just at such a different scale than what you were Talking about with Amazon and Bezos in the first term, what is your reaction to Hegseth saying that Bezos is going to do plenty of winning?

[Marty Baron]

Right. Well, first of all, let me say that I don't put democracy dies in darkness in the category of cringe branding. But. Okay, so just to get that on the record, if you don't mind, I.

[Tim Miller]

Tried to sneak it in there. I just tried to sneak it in there, Marty. Okay.

[Marty Baron]

It wasn't very. It wasn't very sneaky. It was quite blatant. So I found it nauseating seeing that. That encounter at Blue Origin with Pete Hegseth being there, particularly given that Pete Hegseth, and I'm going to continue calling him Secretary of Defense. I insist on that because that is, in fact, his official title, because he's the one who had expelled real journalists from the Pentagon, including the Post Zone reporters. He's the one who asked the Department of Justice to raid the home of Hannah Natenson, one of the Post Zone reporters, and they seized all of her electronic devices, and they have extracted the information from those. Those devices as well. It's not clear that they've reviewed that information yet. The judges said they shouldn't, but I'd be surprised if they hadn't done that already, frankly. I doubt that Bezos spent a second taking Pete Hegseth aside and saying, you know, that was wrong for you to do that. These journalists are doing the job as allowed for and as encouraged under the First Amendment of the Constitution. I doubt he did that at all. I'm sure he didn't. I found it nauseating to watch that and very, very disturbing. And I think that it makes clear, you know, why Bezos has been doing what he's been doing, trying to repair his relationship with Trump. And he's worried about contracts for Blue Origin. Clearly, it's finally beginning to get into shape so that it can get government contracts, and he wants those government contracts. It's largely dependent on government contracts. And then, of course, Amazon has a huge number of government contracts as well, particularly in the area of cloud computing and particularly in the area of national security. I think it becomes more evident by the day why he decided in 2024, 11 days before the presidential election, to kill an endorsement for Kamala Harris and declare that he wouldn't be making presidential endorsements ever again, even though in the two previous presidential cycles, they had editorialized strongly against Donald Trump, even to the point of declaring him to be one of the worst presidents ever. I think we see the reason for that. He's denied it, but I don't believe those denials, frankly.

[Tim Miller]

I guess a Kanye west kind of mental break, I guess I don't know what.

[Marty Baron]

Well, sadly, he doesn't submit to very many interviews and the interviews that he's done have been pretty soft. So if he wants to ask me to interview him, I'd be happy to ask him that question.

[Tim Miller]

We would gladly host that on our platform if you wanted.

[Marty Baron]

I don't expect it to happen.

[Tim Miller]

What would you have done? And you had to have thought about this. You had a lot of trust in him, it seems like, at the time. But had you been still sitting there as an editor right now, this week as he goes to having a co build event with the Secretary of Defense, with Secretary of Defense where he sucks up to him and does not address the fact that the paper can't even report on the department. Like what do you do at that point if you're still at the paper?

[Marty Baron]

It's really hard. I mean, I would have hoped for an opportunity to tell them that I thought that it was hurting our brand, hurting our reputation and driving readers away, that they were going, they were going to being affected by that, by the sight of that, by the appearance of huge conflicts. And this is a paper that flatly declares its independence and it has a history of independence. And yet what this is doing is demonstrating Bezos's dependence on the federal government and on the Trump administration. And so I would have hoped to express that to him. I certainly would have expressed it to the staff that what we needed to do is keep demonstrating through our work that we were fully independent and that none of this behavior on the part of the owner was going to affect the kind of work we do.

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[Tim Miller]

Do you have any theories for what's different this time? We've mentioned cbs, we mentioned him, but ABC and Disney kind of buckled in a way, settling their lawsuit. There have been other examples. As you mentioned at the beginning, Trump threatened Bezos directly and hurt his business directly in the first term. I don't really quite understand. Everybody just worn out. Trump wore everybody down. Is there something else at play here? What's happening? What do you make of it?

[Marty Baron]

I think his threats are more credible this time, and that's proven to be the case. I mean, look what he did to law firms early on in his administration, the second administration. He threatened that firms, they wouldn't get government business, they wouldn't be allowed in government buildings. They were very worried that they wouldn't be able to survive as a. As a business if that happened. And so they caved to his demands. You see that with some of the universities as well. They caved to his demands. I mean, what we're seeing is that so much of the economy, so much of our society is dependent upon the federal government. It's striking just how much money comes from the federal government. And so he has used that as leverage, and he's not hesitant to do that. And certainly nobody in his administration is telling him that he shouldn't, that it's inappropriate or anything like that. They're just carrying out his orders, and not just carrying out his orders, anticipating what his thoughts would be and trying to prove in advance that they are the warriors on his behalf. And so I think that Bezos truly feared that Trump would say absolutely no contracts for Amazon, period. Absolutely no contracts for Blue Origin. And keep in mind, I mean, you know, one of Trump's big buddies, his big donor, was Larry Ellison, obviously now the financier behind the purchase of CBS and Paramount and all of that. And Oracle, his company, the company he founded, is huge in cloud computing. And a big competitor, a big competitor of Amazon's on that front. And then, of course, his best buddy at the time, during the transition, and then subsequent to that, until a bit of a breakup, although they seem to have made up, was Elon Musk. And Elon Musk was his, was a Bezos rival in the area of private space. And keep in mind, remember that when there was that breakup between Elon Musk and Trump, One of the first things Trump said is a good way for us to save money in this government is to give no more contracts, cancel all our contracts with SpaceX. That's what he said. And that's what he would have done, I assume, if there had been true, enduring hostility between Trump and Musk.

[Tim Miller]

I think you get close to kind of what is an appealing answer to me, which is that we're actually talking about ego. Because the thing that's frustrating with me is I guess Trump's threats are more credible, but he also has Taco'd a lot. And I guess you don't want to be the first company that has to go under because of threats from the government. But no companies have gone under. Disney could have survived Trump. Amazon could survive Trump. Apple, and these are some of the richest countries in the history of the world. And I know you got shareholder interests and all that, I get it. But they did that in the first term. And to me, you get closer to something that I can wrap my head around. If it's like, I didn't want Larry Ellison and Elon Musk to beat me, Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are going to beat me in these spaces if I don't suck up to Trump, and I can't handle that. What do you think about that?

[Marty Baron]

Well, I think there was a real threat to them. I don't think that. It's not that they couldn't survive, because I don't really. It's not that they. Yeah, really. So let me finish. So it's not that they couldn't survive, but they may not have been successful. And their objective is to make more money, to have higher profits, to watch their stock go up to grow. And that would have been much more difficult if Trump had been their opponent, definitely. So, I mean, the big growth area for Amazon was contracts with the government for cloud computing, period. Particularly in the area of national security. If Trump had said, we're not giving them any contracts, could Amazon survive? It could survive. Would it be as successful as it was? No. Would its stock tank? Probably. So would Bezos still be wealthy? Yeah. Would he be as wealthy as he is today? No, I think there's a real threat there. And, I mean, the Taco stuff has mostly come in his dealings with foreign governments. And that's a different. That's a different field.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, he would still be more wealthy than he was in 2013 when he bought the Post, and he was only worth 25 billion.

[Marty Baron]

Look, I mean.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I hear you, I hear you. I just Think nobody's tried. I guess I would like to see one of them try to stare him down. Because I guess I just. I think he might taco on the economy. I think he might taco on an economic thing.

[Marty Baron]

If it's like, sorry, I'd like to see one of them try, too. But I think they're fearful of trying. That's the thing, is they don't want to test it. And look, I mean, yeah, I mean, from our perspective, we don't have 100 million. We don't have a billion. Well, I don't know about you, Tim. Maybe you do, but no. Okay. In any event, yeah, I mean, saying okay, what's a few tens of billions here or that way, or 100 billion this way or that way, but that's not the way people in that sphere really look at it. They feel they should be wealthier and wealthier and they don't want to see any threats to their wealth.

[Tim Miller]

You're turning me into Bernie Sanders. Slowly, Marty. I've gone from being a Republican to Bernie Sanders. If that's it, if 260 billion isn't enough, and so I've got a buckle to Donald Trump and suck up to Pete Hegsett. But you're right, first of all, I would not suck up to Pete exit for a single dollar. Right.

[Marty Baron]

Well, first of all, I didn't say it wasn't enough. I think it's enough. It'd be plenty for me.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, sure, I get that.

[Marty Baron]

But I'm saying that they don't see it that way. And look, Elon Musk. What's his compensation? His most recent compensation package with his company, with Tesla. A trillion dollars. A trillion dollars. And guess what? The Washington Post on its editorial page shows you the direction that it's taken. Actually said that was okay. That was fine.

[Tim Miller]

It's another business model, actually, that Post could just decide to do kind of like center right anti woke pro billionaire editorials and maybe like Larry Ellison would buy them for $150 million. It'd only be $100 million loss for Bezos, and that might be a path forward. Something to think about.

[Marty Baron]

Maybe just send Jeff a note offering your advice. I'm sure that he'd be keenly interested in that idea. I think he'd consider it to be absolutely brilliant.

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[Tim Miller]

What is your advice? Let's end with that. What would you do? Jeff's like, I'm sick of this. I'm tired of it. He sells it to a nice billionaire. They call up Marty and they say, hey, come out of retirement for three months to write me a plan. What would you do?

[Marty Baron]

Honestly, I think I'd like to see right now is. I'd like to see them. I'd like to see it put into a nonprofit. I'd like to see Bezos say, okay, I'm giving you a billion dollars. That's not much for me. I can take a tax deduction on that, and I'll subsidize it. It gives it Runway. You'll have to be profitable over a period of time, but you have a lot of time to work that out. You have capital to experiment and innovate. I'd like to see a really good board that's truly independent. I think if it were independent, they can make a very convincing argument to many of the subscribers who have left the Post that they're now on a new course and that they should come back. And I think they would by the hundreds of thousands, because they want the kind of work that the Washington Post is known for doing. And so I would love to see something like that. And then of would have to be a fundamentally digital organization. That's the way things are these days. That's the way people live their lives and. And get their information. They would have to experiment in all sorts of ways with podcasts like this one, give you a little bit of competition. You could use it and Then, you know, and short form video as well. So I think that's. That's clearly the way that a lot of people are getting information, and they would have to think in those terms. And so I would like to see that. I mean, I think that the post is capable of a lot of innovation. I think it demonstrated that in the past, but they still need to be true to their miss True to their core principles. You cannot give up your core principles and be successful.

[Tim Miller]

I'd welcome the competition. That would be great. That's fine. I'm looking at the charts now, and I can't find a Washington Post podcast. Here it is, 82. So that's not that good.

[Marty Baron]

They're killing it. They announced that they're eliminating that podcast, by the way.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, well, so 82 is gone. All right, well, that's good.

[Marty Baron]

And nice to see you keeping the stats really close.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, more room to run for me. Well, you know, it's important to know what's at. To know what? What's out there in the marketplace.

[Marty Baron]

Metrics for everyone.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I guess. Though, as you know, there's limits to that. Right? Like, just deciding to do everything by the metrics takes you to the Tucker Carlson message. I saw earlier the Daily Caller. You know, Daily Caller was good for a moment.

[Marty Baron]

That's right.

[Tim Miller]

We could do that. I could come on here and, you know, I know what the people want, but if you just give people what they want all the time, there's a lack of sustainability to that.

[Marty Baron]

I totally agree. I think you have to have a soul. You have to know what your soul is. You have to be faithful to your purpose in life. And once you abandon that, people know that you've done that and they abandon you.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Also, there's no point. What's the point of doing this if you can't just do it to tell people what you think is true? All right. Have you taken any pass at Jeff on that? I guess that's my last question. You worked with him pretty closely for a while. Have you tried to shake him or get any sense into him?

[Marty Baron]

You're talking about in the last few days or the last year?

[Tim Miller]

Or a year? Yeah.

[Marty Baron]

More than a year ago. I sent him a note. I didn't get a great response.

[Tim Miller]

One of my former bosses was Susie Wiles. I sent her a note last week. I also didn't get a response. So sometimes you have limited control.

[Marty Baron]

We have more in common than we thought.

[Tim Miller]

All right. Actually, I do have one more last thing. You're an executive editor. We have a news outlet here. What's a story you would be assigning right now you think is getting missed? Is there anything out there that you're thinking, thinking that there's a big story that isn't getting as much attention as it should?

[Marty Baron]

I still believe that the corruption in this administration deserves a lot more attention than it's received. I think the New York Times has done a really great job of looking at that as well as others. The Wall Street Journal just did a really good story along those lines as well. So it's just a lot more to look at. I think that a lot of people in this administration are seeing this as an opportunity to profit, and the First Family is right at the center of that.

[Tim Miller]

Well, if you have a former reporter who you think would do a good newsletter on the corruption beat, I might know a home for them so we can talk about that offline. Marty, I appreciate you so much, man. Thank you for coming on. Sorry for teasing sometimes.

[Marty Baron]

I can handle it. Really? Really.

[Tim Miller]

I know you can. I appreciate it. I welcome all teasing back and hope we can do it again sometime. All right. When there's better news.

[Marty Baron]

Sounds great. Good luck. Take care.

[Tim Miller]

All right, everybody else will be back here tomorrow with one of your faves. See you all then. Peace. I'm sticking with Jeffrey. Jeffrey Preston Bezos. I get a feeling when I look in his eye. Do you need 180 billion tips? The bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.