Journalist Michael Wolff wrote
in a column for
The Guardian
that the Washington Post Co.’s recent acquisition of Forney Corp. “rewrites the nature of the Post Company, turning it from a focused enterprise, with two main divisions [publishing and education], into a holding company, in essence an investment vehicle.”
Forney Corp. is a supplier of products that control and monitor combustion processes. Wolff wrote:
“[T]his new view of the company suggests a strategy of converting its current $4 billion value into businesses with predictable cash flows and capable management. In that way, the Post Company becomes like a private equity firm, or like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Let us forget the fact that nobody at the Post Company has the foggiest notion of how to be a financier and asset manager. It makes more sense to use this bizarre corporate development — a Hail Mary pass if there ever was one — to measure how far the Post has fallen and how bereft it is of any reasonable plans.
Wolff listed several “wrong decision[s]” made by the Post: expanding its local rather than national coverage, scaling down its digital strategy, cutting staff and failing to anticipate technology’s impact on its education businesses.
Wolff also opined that
Washington Post
publisher Katharine Weymouth, niece of chairman Donald Graham “has been a disaster in a job for which she had, other than her lineage, no qualifications.” He called an ouster of Weymouth “An obvious step except for the fact that it is apparently not going to happen.”
Wolff speculated that the Forney acquisition is a move by Graham toward getting the family out of the newspaper business — and into an area where no one in the family will want to work. (Source:
The Guardian,
July 22, 2013.)
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