The Washington Post Plans an Influx of Outside Opinion Writers

New York Times

2 days ago

The Washington Post has published some of the world's most influential voices for more than a century, including columnists like George Will and newsmakers like the Dalai Lama and President Trump.
A new initiative aims to sharply expand that lineup, opening The Post to many published opinion articles from other newspapers across America, writers on Substack and eventually nonprofessional writers, according to four people familiar with the plan. Executives hope that the program, known internally as Ripple, will appeal to readers who want more breadth than The Post's current opinion section and more quality than social platforms like Reddit and X.
The project will promote the outside opinion columns on The Post's website and app but outside its paywall, according to the people, who would speak only anonymously to discuss a confidential project. It will operate outside the paper's opinion section.
The Post aims to strike some of the initial partnership deals this summer, two of the people said, and the company recently hired an editor to oversee writing for Ripple. A final phase, allowing nonprofessionals to submit columns with help from an A.I. writing coach called Ember, could begin testing this fall. Human editors would review submissions before publication.
A spokeswoman for The Post declined to comment.
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com founder and owner of The Post, has been trying to turn around the news organization's struggling business. He has told confidants that he wants to broaden the publication's reach beyond its traditional audience of coastal elites. For years, Mr. Bezos has also urged leaders at The Post to embrace aggregation, the practice of summarizing and linking to journalism published by other outlets, to attract additional readers.
Ripple would be a big step in that direction. Executives involved with the project believe that it could reach a potential audience of 38 million U.S. adults, based on internal research, and that some of them would join a 'talent network' to submit their own writing, two of the people said. The company is also planning to explore subscription bundles with partner publishers, one of the people said.
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