Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said it was her idea to have the controversial salons, where lobbyists and association executives would have paid a hefty fee to attend off-the-record dinners with reporters and editors at the Post.  The idea was aborted after there was an uproar in the newsroom.

“I would rather not have done it, but I think it was a great lesson for me and for my team,” she said. “And what I said to people, right when it happened, I said, ‘I apologize. I clearly got this wrong.’”

Her comments came in a recent interview with Poynter President Karen Dunlap, which was posted on PoynterOnline.

Weymouth also said during the hour-long interview that she believes in investing in the newsroom, “but at this point, we just, we have to cut back. We have to have a smaller cost structure, which is not fun, and it’s not glamorous, but in order to sustain the kind of quality journalism we all believe in, we have to do that so we can continue to do it and continue to invest in our journalism. And at the same time, experiment on new platforms.”

Some other highlights of the interview included these remarks:

• “We have a bigger audience than we have ever had. Ninety percent of our page views for WashingtonPost.com come from outside the Washington area, and roughly 10-15 percent of those are international.”
• “For me, actually, one of my favorite things to do — and it was Don’s and my grandmother’s — is to go to watch the presses run at night.  The world is changing, I don’t know whether we’ll have printed newspapers in 10 years or whatever, but to feel the presses start to hum, and to watch them come off, is just, it’s really amazing.”
• “So, the whole world has changed. People are on Craigslist and eBay and Monster and AutoTrader, and you name it. There are a thousand different companies coming after almost every niche we’re in.”
• “I think I would say we are putting out as good if not better journalism than we ever have. And she would be proud of it and proud of the reporters we have, the editors we have and the business people we have. And we are adapting. This is a world where you have to adapt, you have to try new things and she would identify with you have to make mistakes, too. And that’s OK. We’re gonna throw some spaghetti against the wall. Some of it’s gonna work, some of it’s not. We’ve got to learn from those and keep going.”

Read the complete interview

Reader Comments:

From Dan: She deserves a 0 bonus and a 30% cut in pay for the “fine job” she has done – layoffs, a much smaller paper for a higher price, what a legacy.

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