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One of America’s last remaining major newspaper dynasties ended on Tuesday as the Washington Post parted ways with Katharine Weymouth, the paper’s publisher since 2009, whose family had run the Post since the Great Depression.
Weymouth’s departure came less than a year after the newspaper was purchased by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, for $250m. As publisher, Weymouth helped engineer the sale to Bezos. She will remain on the payroll through the end of the year as an adviser, the paper reported, but will step down as publisher at the end of September.
Her replacement is Frederick J Ryan Jr, a former senior adviser to President Reagan and a founding editor of Politico, the Washington-based, politics-devoted media outlet. The Post has felt pressure to keep up with Politico’s online coverage.
“You don’t shrink your way to success,” Ryan said in an interview with the Post. “The Post is on the move. There’s no question about that.”
Bezos said Ryan was excited to get started. “I welcome Fred and thank him for agreeing to become the Post’s next publisher and CEO,” Bezos said. “I know he’s excited to meet the team and roll up his sleeves.”
The leader of the Post’s newsroom, executive editor Marty Baron, was to remain in his post.
Weymouth is a granddaughter of Katharine Graham, the towering Washington figure who steered the paper through its coverage of the Watergate scandal. Graham retired as chair of the board in 1991 and died in 2001. Weymouth’s great-grandfather bought the paper in 1933.
Weymouth, who grew up in New York City, became publisher with a limited newspaper background. She was criticized for a plan to host dinners at her home at which lobbyists and business and industry figures paid to mingle with Washington Post reporters.
Last month the Post announced that July 2014 had been its largest traffic month in history. The Post web site saw 39.5m unique users in July 2014, up 63% year-on-year, according to a Comscore multiplatform report from that month.
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