Yesterday, The Washington Post (former employer of Nathan Grayson and me) laid off less than 100 people on the business side, the latest upheaval at the Jeff Bezos-owned paper that’s struggling with the unique problem of what it wants to be during the upcoming Trump administration, and the much less unique problem of how to get people to pay money for journalism. Among those laid off were, reportedly, most of The Post’s PR team; a memo about a new PR strategy reads in part,
Talent-driven journalism is the future of media, and personalities and creators will lead the way...
Effective immediately, we are repositioning the entire Post PR division to build and launch our Star Talent Unit. We will stop the dedicated practice of publicity for our journalism across broadcast and traditional media outlets…
The core focus of our team will be to ensure our audiences know who our journalists are and rely even more on these trusted voices... We will also be working closely with WP Ventures, expanding our talent roster to include creators.
I wasn’t alone in being horrified by the phrase “Star Talent Unit.” While it’s not clear yet precisely what this new approach will look like, the name and the mention of "creators and personalities," alongside the intention to hire more, suggest The Post could lean in on promoting whoever it considers its biggest personalities instead of the paper’s work more holistically. On its face, such a move would make a kind of sense; I think most journalists would admit influencers and content creators are nibbling our lunch when it comes to engagement and subscriber money, especially among younger audiences. And I think we’d all admit that borrowing some of these personalities’ promotion strategies is an unfortunate necessity these days, especially on the internet.
The idea of the “star reporter” is a long-standing image that’s been present in every newsroom I’ve worked at or known people who work at: your biggest names who do the site’s most high-profile work, and as such are afforded the autonomy, time, and pay (maybe– we’re still talking about journalism here) to do so. They do the kinds of stories that go wide, that audiences talk about, that can effect change in your beats. They become the people your site is known for and come to feel essential to, the people readers take to the comments section to declare a site “over” if they leave. Sometimes, especially these days, these folks strike out on their own, realizing they can use the name they’ve built in a newsroom to get paid by readers directly. Other times, an organization will bend over backwards to keep them, which may or may not go well for them and the people they work with.
I’m not going to pretend star power isn’t real: there are writers out there with unique strengths and compelling personalities and savvy self-promotion skills. When you’re an editor or team leader, as I’ve been, you don’t serve those writers, your outlet, or your audience by clipping their wings, but you have to balance that against the needs and strengths of everyone on your team, including those whose talents or interests lie in less flashy areas. I always wanted as best I could to give each of my writers the assignments they wanted and the things they’d excel at, to put them on the work that would be the best for both them and the outlet. This isn’t always possible: there are only so many of the biggest games of the year to review or events to cover; if everyone is heads-down in long-term reporting or ambitious criticism, no stories are going up while that work gets done; sometimes, there is just workaday news to write or videos to make or admin work to do, to keep your site functioning or to keep the suits above you happy about your page views or, simply, to serve your audience and keep them informed.
Ideally, you want to give everyone on your staff the time and opportunity to shine at what they shine at, and to acknowledge and promote that work accordingly, but I’m not sure–and I’ll regretfully include myself in this–I’ve ever seen that fully work out. Just as much as “star” reporters can elevate an outlet, they can wreak havoc inside it too. Resentments flourish; even in the most well-managed scenarios, it’s natural to be jealous of someone who you think gets more freedom and attention than you do. People can behave badly, leading to mercurial “stars” and mistreated or bitter colleagues. A “star” can, intentionally or not, claim a beat or style of work and crowd others out of it. Colleagues can feel like they have to, or be made to, pick up the slack while someone does long-term work without ever getting their own shot at it. A site can go from being a team of journalists to feeling like a “star” or two and their support staff.
When the big stories from the big names go up, they can seem to an audience like the work of whoever is on the byline, when in reality everything that goes on the page is the product, to some extent, of everyone who works at an outlet. Great journalism doesn’t happen in a vacuum; colleagues talk a story over, point a reporter to sources, lend their expertise, give feedback, edit, suggest a headline, provide art. They write the day-to-day stories readers need, and those stories help keep the lights on and make the money that pays for the more ambitious work. The “star reporter” builds on the work and reputation of an outlet to do their work, from the kinds of stories they pursue to the sources who’ll be willing to talk to them. A good newsroom and its leaders acknowledge this, internally and externally, when a big story goes live. A handful of people’s names might be on the page, but that story is the work of everyone who works on that team, and everyone had some hand in its impact and success. A good leader, and a good organization, doesn’t leave those teammates behind or use them to build up other people’s names.
I’m saying this all from my perch at a version of the situation I’m warning against, an independent outlet built, at least in part, on name recognition and thus some version of star power. It’s likely you were willing to pay for Aftermath because you heard of the people who work here; you heard of us because an outlet and its team supported us in learning to make the work you’re paying for. You could see Aftermath and our worker-owned outlet peers as a success story of the very thing The Post could pursue, some kind of triumph of personal branding alongside the democratizing power of the internet.
But you could also read it, more pessimistically but maybe more honestly, as a damning example of what it takes to still make journalism these days. Things weren’t going so well that the five of us and our colleagues at other outlets all decided there was a way to make them go even better; our organizations failed us, or didn’t want us anymore, and we went independent because it was that or leave the field. I’m aware, every day, that everyone can’t do that, that there’s a view of our sites that sees us building our own little islands and leaving others behind. I fully believe independent organizations like Aftermath and our peers are paving the way for democratic workplaces that live our values and prioritize our audiences. But we aren’t, or aren’t yet, a working alternative to the system crumbling around us, one that creates a reliable future for journalists and journalism as a whole.
We have to undertake all the burnout-inducing self-promotion and name recognition and cultivation of reader relationships as a survival mechanism as much as a unique strength of our space. The Post’s PR pivot has the potential to embrace the worst of that, to cut even more people out of having a satisfying, stable future in journalism by combining the harshest requirements of independent spheres with established journalism’s own worst habits of competition and “star power” myths. A focus on “star talent” wouldn’t serve those supposed “stars”--as we’ve already seen, why would someone submit themselves to the strictures of an organization when even the organization is telling them their personal value will get them farther? And it wouldn’t serve the people who don’t get to be the “star talent,” who might feel their work is devalued or that they’re playing second fiddle to whoever the paper decides is worth promoting. And why would anyone in this situation put their efforts into The Post, or any outlet, as a whole, if that outlet's PR strategy promotes the opposite?
There’s no denying things both in established journalism and outside of it are bleak. It’s naive to be dedicated to an outlet that could fold or cut you at any moment, and it’s exhausting to add self-promotion to any writer’s already endless to-do list. One of the most well-resourced news organizations in the world should be looking for alternatives to how things currently stand, not just creating another version.
