According to reports, The Washington Post has hired some 50 new employees this year; not bad for a faltering newspaper.
Or perhaps it's not faltering, especially since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the paper for the bargain price of $250 million last year.
"With chief information officer and technology vice president Shailesh Prakash at the helm, Bezos is pumping cash into the once staid company’s IT infrastructure. Lots of it. The new leadership has put 25 computer engineers into the newsroom, helping reporters craft multifaceted digital stories for mobile devices," writes VentureBeat's Richard Byrne Reilly.
Dylan Byers of Politico reports that "The hires, spurred by Jeff Bezos' financial backing, have come drip by drip: an addition to the online politics team one week, an addition to Wonkblog the next." He adds that "there is a sense, for the first time in years, that it's good to be at The Washington Post."
The Post is hinting that it might be reaching beyond Washington to attract a national audience. It has opened a software development office in New York, and it has announced plans to hire a reporter to be based in Silicon Valley.
I didn't see any word of an expansion of the paper's science or medical coverage, which has taken a few hits on the Tracker recently. But if the Post wants to broaden its reach, it should consider broadening its science and medical coverage, two things that often seem to rank higher in readers' estimation than in that of editors.
-Paul Raeburn
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