| BY MATT GETTY
Patrick Butler ’96 Charts Unique Path to Washington
Having written speeches for President Ford, advised congressmen on policy decisions, and overseen public relations campaigns for Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and Bob Dole, Patrick Butler is a self-described “creature of Washington.” His expertise with the intersection of government and media has not only helped the Washington Post Company shape the future of news, but it’s also helped shape the future of the company. Known as a man who can open any door in Washington, Butler actually began his own journey from a Chattanooga newspaper to the halls of power in the nation’s capital with a closed door. Click here for Web-exclusive profile on the Post Company VP.
Tomorrow’s Web: A Conversation with Jim Brady ’89
Jim Brady got in on the ground floor of online news. Shortly after washingtonpost.com’s launch, he coordinated the site’s coverage of the Clinton impeachment as an assistant managing editor. From there he moved on to AOL, where he became vice president of production and operations, overseeing the online service’s coverage of the 2000 presidential election and 9-11. In 2004 he returned to washingtonpost.com, where he is executive editor. Click here for Web-exclusive Q&A with Jim Brady.
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Over the past several years, journalists have spilled a lot of ink—and written even more digital text—worrying about their future. Newspapers, we’re told, are dying; the Web is collapsing the reporting cycle into a matter of seconds; and blogs are shifting authority from media conglomerates to self-styled pundits typing away from their bedrooms. Surely, tomorrow’s news will look like nothing we’ve seen before. Not so, says Washington Post Company vice president and AU alumnus Patrick Butler ’96. From where he sits, the future of the media actually looks a lot like the past. “It’s going back in a way to the days of the lonely pamphleteer in colonial America,” he explains, characterizing Ben Franklin, the country’s first self-styled pundit, as a proto-blogger of sorts. “Then, everybody had more of a chance to publish their own views for a relatively low cost, and now we’ve come full circle.” Tomorrow's news For those of us thumbing or clicking through tomorrow’s news then, the best way to sort out the truth may be to read like Americans did more than 200 years ago. “In colonial days nobody expected anybody in the journalism business to be fair and objective,” says Butler, noting that though he expects traditional media like the Post to remain impartial, readers will again have to filter more of the truth for themselves. “They expected that each one of these pamphleteers and newspapers was going to be promoting a certain point of view . . . and people took all of that with a grain of salt. They had to read enough, be exposed to enough, and be interested enough to have a comprehensive and sophisticated view of what all these people were trying to say. No one had a monopoly on the truth, but in the cacophony of different opinions and different bits of information, a compelling version of the truth could emerge.” With a guiding hand in business development decisions throughout the decade that saw the Post Company shift its focus from print to new media, Butler has already seen much of the future he’s describing. Post Company president Donald Graham characterizes him as one of the “unsung heroes” in helping the company “understand and take advantage of the opportunity these new media offered.” In his 12 years with the company, Butler extended its television presence by founding Newsweek Productions and supervising more than 200 hours of Emmy award–winning documentaries. He helped craft digital communication as the chair of PCS Action. He worked with a handful of other executives to launch and guide what some see as the clearest picture of the future of news, washingtonpost.com. In fact, with its 9 million online readers, daily live Web-hosted discussions, and hundreds of links to internal and external blogs, the Post Web site may offer the clearest glimpse into how traditional news organizations will adapt to a world in which news is increasingly shaped by virtual pamphleteers. The award-winning washingtonpost.com began as what the site’s executive editor, AU alumnus Jim Brady ’89 calls an insurance policy. “They knew there was certainly a chance that [the Web] was going to be a big deal and inevitably create some tension for the newspaper industry,” says Brady. “The thinking was, if we’re going to lose readers, let’s lose them to ourselves before someone else beats us to the punch.” Though they didn’t know what the future held for the Web, Post Company brass made one thing clear from the start: washingtonpost.com, which will turn 10 in June, would grow on its own as a legitimate news source free to compete with the newspaper that spawned it. “We thought, well this is our version of inventing television or inventing radio—it was that fundamental,” says Butler. “We didn’t feel like we’d be cannibalizing ourselves; we just felt like we needed to provide the same kind of information and high quality journalism in the evolving forms that people want.” continued next page >> top |
