Just the Facts: Washington Post, NY Times at the Tipping Point

To start the week, let’s look at a set of six facts from the top of the American journalism food chain that on the surface may seem merely ironic or even typical. But aggregated in the cerebral cortex and shaken lightly, they are enough to make even a veteran journalism industry critic take a knee:

1. Washington Post chairman Don Graham has joined the board of Facebook

2. The New York Times had to take a $250 million home equity loan on its new Manhattan HQ building to pay the light bill, putting back in circulation the unsettling speculation that Google could/should/might acquire the New York Times.

3. Today paidcontent.org features an interview with newly appointed New York Times GM Denise Warren in which she discusses, among other things, Times Extra, a feature that for the first time automatically integrates journalism from outside sources alongside Times articles.

4. The interview appears on washingtonpost.com, which has a content-sharing partnership with  paidcontent.org.

5. The New York Times on Saturday published a significant news story previewing a unpublished draft of 514-page government report presenting a harsh assessment of the failed rebuilding effort in Iraq. It’s the kind of journalism that only well-funded major news-gathering organizations can do, the sort of personnel- and money-intensive public interest work that makes mainstream journalism worth fighting for.

6. The Times article was supported by ProPublica, an independent, non-profit investigative reporting operation funded largely by a $10 million annual grant Sandler Foundation.