The news business is in crisis. A presidential election is fast approaching. Faced with financial challenges and political divisions, several of America’s largest news organizations have handed the reins to editors who value relentless reporting on a limited budget.
And it turns out that they are all British.
Will Lewis, a veteran of London’s Daily Telegraph and News UK, is now chief executive of The Washington Post, where journalists have raised questions about his ethics on Fleet Street. He recently fired the newspaper’s American editor and replaced her with a former colleague at The Telegraph, dumbfounding American journalists who had never heard of him.
Emma Tucker (formerly of The Sunday Times) took charge of The Wall Street Journal last year, shortly after Mark Thompson (formerly of the BBC) became president of CNN, where she ordered a new US version of the veteran television programme. BBC comedy and trivia. Do I have news for you?
They joined a group of Britons who were already installed in the American media establishment. Michael Bloomberg, a prominent Anglophile, hired John Micklethwait (former editor of the London-based Economist) in 2015 to run Bloomberg News. Rupert Murdoch tapped Keith Poole (The Sun and The Daily Mail) to edit The New York Post in 2021, the same year The Associated Press named an Englishwoman, Daisy Veerasingham, as its chief executive.
“We are the ultimate trophies for American billionaires,” joked Joanna Coles, the English editor who in April became editor of The Daily Beast, the online news outlet named after a newspaper featured in an Evelyn novel. Waugh. Coles has not hesitated to recruit more of his compatriots, installing a Scot as editor-in-chief and a Guardian reporter as Washington bureau chief.
“We are sourcing from the British,” he said in an interview.
Theories abound about the enduring appeal of British publishers to American owners. The accent has its own worldly charm. But tough, tough journalism is a cherished tradition in Britain, where newspapers and tabloids have struggled for decades, often with budgets dwarfed by those of their American rivals.
British journalists tend to be paid worse than their American counterparts, a plus for many news organizations already facing cuts. And while Fleet Street has a reputation for confusing ethics, that goes hand in hand with a reader-pleasing willingness to burn sacred cows.
“I think the British press is much less important and what I call the elite press in America is much more judgmental about its place in the world,” said Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker. and The Daily Beast, she said in an interview.
He added that the erosion of the American newspaper industry also meant that owners had fewer local leaders to choose from.
“If you’re looking for a new person to run The Washington Post, what’s comparable in terms of an institution right now?” said Mrs. Brown. “What’s left? So many newspapers have died that we are looking at a much smaller group of people trained to play that particular role.”
Brown began the transatlantic convoy in 1984 when Condé Nast hired her to edit Vanity Fair. Her highly English mix of impertinence, biting prose and class obsession made the then-eventful magazine a success. She was soon joined at Condé Nast by Anna Wintour, whose father was a long-time editor of London’s Evening Standard.
“Americans think we are less expensive and more ruthless,” Wintour, editor of Vogue since 1988 and chief content officer of Condé Nast, wrote in an email. “It is also true that news is such an important part of British culture that it is in our blood, a bit like football, humor or Shakespeare.
“British journalists also tend to be tougher. News is a turbulent business in the UK – it has been for centuries – and so when US media companies feel they need to fight to remain relevant or profitable, it is perhaps only natural that they look across the Atlantic. ”.
Ms. Coles agreed with that assessment. “British people tend to be good with fewer resources,” she said. “The industry is in crisis and the British are unflappable in crises.”
Furthermore, Coles added, the current unrest in American politics and fears that the country’s global power is waning are old hat for the British.
“The end of the empire is a very familiar scenario for us, so it doesn’t intimidate us,” he said.
British publishers also have a strong track record.
Wintour and Brown were so successful that for a time British journalists published Details, National Review, The New Republic, Self, Condé Nast Traveler and Harper’s Bazaar. CNN’s Mr. Thompson, who became a U.S. citizen this year, is credited with reviving the fortunes of the New York Times during his eight years as chief executive.
There has been the occasional failure. In 1992, Brown lured Alexander Chancellor, the former Old Etonian editor of The Spectator, to The New Yorker and put him in charge of its “Talk of the Town” section, famous for its sophisticated take on Manhattan life. Shortly after his arrival, Chancellor, who died in 2017, told his colleagues that he had stumbled upon an astonishing story: a gigantic Christmas tree outside Rockefeller Center.
The article was quietly killed. And Mr. Chancellor was out of work a few months after that.
This most recent crop of British imports can be explained by the newfound shortages in the American news business. Ms. Tucker and Mr. Thompson have overseen layoffs and budget cuts; Lewis warned his staff that The Post lost $77 million last year and that its readership has dropped by half since 2020.
But while British journalists are accustomed to intense competition, their journalistic rules are not always in line with American standards. At The Washington Post, the home of Woodward and Bernstein, some of Lewis’s behavior has unsettled the newsroom.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Lewis had urged former Post editor Sally Buzbee not to cover a court decision regarding her involvement in the Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal in Britain. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Lewis has said the account of the conversation was inaccurate.) An NPR journalist later revealed that Mr. Lewis had offered an exclusive interview if the journalist agreed to publish an article about the scandal. (The spokeswoman said Lewis had spoken to NPR before joining The Post, and that after joining The Post, interview requests were made “through normal corporate communications channels.”)
This type of behavior may be acceptable in some London newspapers, where owners are less reluctant to manipulate coverage. In American newsrooms it is prohibited, as is the practice of paying for information. At The Telegraph, Lewis spent £110,000 on documents that fueled a damaging expose of parliamentary corruption. (His rivals at The Sun and The Times of London opposed a similar deal.) The Telegraph reporter who obtained the documents, Robert Winnett, will become the Post’s editor later this year.
As for the view across the pond?
“We all greet this with a mixture of amusement and indignation,” said one Fleet Street editor, who requested anonymity to avoid the wrath of overly sensitive superiors. (In the spirit of the British tabloids, the request was granted.)
“It’s funny that these elegant high priests of American journalism are being attacked by good, old-fashioned, tough-guy British editors; “It is outrageous that they find it so extraordinary that they could have something to learn on the other side of the pond,” the editor said. “Yes, our standards are a little lower, but we are extremely competitive, intense and no-nonsense, and that probably helps given how the industry is going.”
Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson contributed reports.