Photo by Dan Macy
After losing two of its star writers—Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews—to Klein’s new digital media venture that will be backed by Vox Media, the Washington Post announced today plans to hire more bloggers, redesign the site, introduce a “Sunday Style & Arts section,” and add a “breaking-news desk that will operate from 8 a.m. until midnight.”
In a memo to staffers from Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron obtained by Poynter, Baron says the Post plans to “[hire[ writers to author “verticals” on a wide array of subjects,” which “will both deepen our reporting in The Post’s traditional areas of concentration and broaden the range of subjects we cover.” Furthermore, the Post’s new “Sunday Style & Arts section,” which they plan to launch this spring, will aim to make “forceful and elegant [statements] about our strengths in those areas.” Currently, the Post has separate Sunday Style and Arts sections. The breaking news desk Baron describes will operate in addition to the overnight crew, from 8 a.m. to midnight. Baron also says an expansion of the paper’s Sunday magazine, as well as a redesign of the site.
Earlier this month, Post wunderkind Ezra Klein—who heads the paper’s wildly popular Wonkblog—announced his departure in order to start a new digital media venture, which the Post declined to shell out upwards of $10 million dollars to fund. Many criticized the paper for choosing not to supporting Klein’s new website, which he describes as “a site that’s as good at explaining the world as it is at reporting on it,” but Post publisher Katherine Weymouth defended the decision in a recent interview with Washingtonian’s Harry Jaffe. “It seemed to be potentially a bigger distraction that would take resources without building the Post,” Weymouth tells Jaffe. “Had he wanted to keep Wonkblog within the Post, that would have been a different story.”
In addition to the plans for the Post’s future, Baron outlined many of the new hires acquired by the Post in recent days, including National Journal executive editor Adam Kushner, executive editor, who will head a new digital initiative for online commentary and analysis.
You can read the full memo here.
