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3
2011 ANNUAL REPORT
But the future of the Post will be aected more
by the substantial digital progress of 2011.
Excellence at what we have done for years will
not get us to the future; we need to transition
to a new business model:
• Visitshavebeenup14%twoyearsinarow.
• Monthly unique readers were up 26% for
the year.
• Mobilevisitswereup98%.
• Engagement and repeat visits, however
measured, were up (but in this crucial area,
we all want to do much better).
Marcus Brauchli and the whole Post newsroom
(and a lot of technology and business people)
deserve credit for all the digital achievements.
Every day of my 41 years here, I’ve been proud to
be part of The Washington Post — now as much
as ever. In 2011, Post reporters had a particularly
good year raising bipartisan havoc among the
corrupt, the inept and the lazy. Brave war corre-
spondents (Ernesto Londono, Josh Partlow, Karin
Brulliard, Sudarsan Raghavan and others) kept
the focus on Iraq, Afghanistan and other war
zones; Dan Balz, Karen Tumulty and a brilliant cast
of young reporters led our campaign coverage.
Though cost-cutting is an inevitable and crucial
part of the future, we’ll continue to give readers
a great newspaper every day (to use an old-
fashioned term).
The Post also added Shailesh Prakash, vice
president–technology, who may become the
newspaper’sMostValuablePlayerinthefuture.
He’s a highly sophisticated engineer and team
builder who takes on the task of leading our
developers, engineers and systems people into
the future.
The Post now has a strong top-management
team across the board.
Meanwhile, the WaPo Labs team created two
new products: Trove, a personalized news
site, and Washington Post Social Reader, a
Facebook app.
Trove is o to a very promising start. I use it
often, and it points me to stories of great inter-
est that I’d otherwise miss.
Social Reader has astonished us all. It debuted
on September 22, the day of Facebook’s devel-
oper conference.
As I write, just five months later, 15 million peo-
ple have downloaded it.
What is it?
1. It’s an application on Facebook. To use it, you
have to download it on the Facebook site:
just enter “Washington Post Social Reader”
into the Facebook search bar, then click on
“Go to App” when a permission box appears.
2. It’s a “social reading” experience. If you sign
up, you’ll see what your friends are reading,
and they’ll see what you’re reading.
I certainly don’t think Social Reader is the
answer to the future of news. But, it’s taught
me three things:
1. 80% of those downloading it are 18 to 34
years old. It’s the first news project our
Company’s ever done that reaches millions
of young people.