Report: Bezos Talks WaPo Strategy Every Two Weeks

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos checks in with his staff at the Post every two weeks, reports USAToday.

Speaking at the Code Media conference, Post editor Marty Baron said the publication has a conference call with Bezos "to talk strategy."

"We never talk to him about our coverage," Baron said. "He doesn’t suggest stories, he focuses on strategy."

At the conference, Baron talked about what Bezos brought to the Post — in a nutshell, a new way of looking at the journalism business.

"I thought he would be good for the Post because he could bring a sense of growth, a huge knowledge of technology, and a real understanding of consumer behavior," Baron said. "That's been incredibly helpful for us. Our history had been deprived of a lot of new thinking. It was really important to have somebody with a fresh perspective."

The Post saw 100 million visitors to its website in 2016, and Baron says subscriptions to the Post online are up, without offering specifics. The Post charges for access to read more than five free articles monthly.

With Bezos at the helm, the Post changed strategy from just covering Washington to becoming a national publication, brought in people to work the overnight shift to feed fresh content for people in the morning and created blogs to focus on subjects the Internet was interested in, according to Baron.