Jeff Bezos – Letter to The Washington Post employees

Garth Beyer

To the employees of The Washington Post:

You’ll have heard the news, and many of you will greet it with a degree of apprehension. When a single family owns a company for many decades, and when that family acts for all those decades in good faith, in a principled manner, in good times and in rough times, as stewards of important values – when that family has done such a good job – it is only natural to worry about change

So, let me start with something critical. The values of The Post do not need changing. The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.

I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.

There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention.

Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post — as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States — is especially important. I would highlight two kinds of courage the Grahams have shown as owners that I hope to channel. The first is the courage to say wait, be sure, slow down, get another source. Real people and their reputations, livelihoods and families are at stake. The second is the courage to say follow the story, no matter the cost. While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.

I want to say one last thing that’s really not about the paper or this change in ownership. I have had the great pleasure of getting to know Don very well over the last ten plus years. I do not know a finer man.

Sincerely,

Jeff Bezos

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Letter found here

This makes me curious, not necessarily about where Jeff will take the paper (that’s a natural curiosity to everyone in knowledge of the ownership change), but what I or you would do if we all the sudden found ourselves in charge of the newspaper – or any newspaper for that matter.

Would we turn it completely digital? Would we break it up into smaller newspapers covering specific parts of Washington (and America)? Would we find a new way to challenge advertisers? Would we shift the writing toward more gonzo journalism?

These questions, as well as hundreds of others, I’m sure, are questions Jeff is asking himself. Think on them.

Now imagine if the answers you give to the questions turn out to be the same ones Jeff gives. Exciting, huh? Now is the time to make critical educated decisions on what to do with a newspaper company, when you’re not responsible, and you can verify what works, what experts* would do, and how to handle the ever-changing** newspaper market.

*You can argue Jeff Bezos is not a newspaper expert, but he brings enough to the table for me to call him one.

**Some say dying, and sure, the newspaper industry is dying, but when I answer the questions above, I think it’s changing more than dying.

 

Some Now. More Later.

Garth Beyer

People are talking now. Not so much about you, but to you. That you’re crazy, that you’re weird, that what you are doing isn’t going to work out. Some are even saying (for a fact, they are at least thinking) you will fail.

I am amazed at how many people have the guts to say things to our faces that they would normally have only said behind our backs. This leaves us – the dreamers, those with ambition, and those who try new things all the time – with a new challenge to face.

So for those that are being talked to (negatively) now. I have one piece of wisdom that will meet the challenge.

Just remember that people talk later more than they talk now. Will they say that you gave up? Or will they say how they used to know this crazy person that actually went off and made it as an artist, a fitness expert, a writer? Will they say how they got you mad and upset and question if you’re doing the right thing? Or will they say how despite all resistance, you carried on doing what you knew was right?

People talk. Some now. More Later.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Going

Garth E. Beyer

What It Means To Mashup

Garth Beyer

I preach endlessly that the new age art is created by mashing up two or more properties, objects, or entities to create something entirely new.

Here I present to you Ben Heine’s Pencil vs Camera project. Click the picture to view more.

everyoneislonely

Something I’m incredibly happy that I found: Writers as Architects.

Another artist, defying gravity.

Art was once about taking a photo of a photo of a photo of a photo. Now it’s about using a different medium at each level. It’s about combining not only different types of brushes, but different paints, different juices, coffees, and mud.

This method of creation goes beyond the easel. It encompasses us in advertising, in technology, and self-made products. The world is being redesigned and it wants you to be an artist.

Well, will you be?

 

Stay Positive & Mash Mash Mash

Garth E. Beyer

Newton vs Einstein

Garth Beyer

Newton only cared about analyzing everything and proving ideas with mathematics. Newton had a fixed idea about life and how it worked. He created laws instead of breaking them. A man who studied outward rather than inward.

Einstein is about creativity. He thought about macro and micro level moments of life and how they can’t be broken down to mathematics. The macro and the micro is of the ether, of uncertainty, of fear, and creativity. Rather than create laws, Einstein went on a crusade against them, against stereotypes, against the impossible. A man of originality and intellect.

There’s a reason why Einstein, not Newton, is synonymous with genius.

 

Stay Positive & All In Theory, Of Course…

Garth E. Beyer

Why These Are The Best Years The World Has Ever Seen

Garth Beyer

Not even a hundred years ago, everything was work. Food on the table. People relied on each other. You got what you made. Blood, sweat, and tears.

Then we hit the industrial revolution, and as a result, work became less of a worry. What took our attention is all the free time we had. What would we watch on television? What would we listen to on the radio? What activities and groups would we now participate in?

Then the post-industrial revolution happened. This revolution is lead by this current generation. This revolution can be summed up like this:

everything that had become free time, has now become design.

 

Interesting concept... - ImgurAnd if your mind goes to robots designing everything, I would argue that. Sure, robots can help us create things. But they can’t design them ahead of us. We crunched the numbers and wrote the program before a calculator could tell us the square root of 64. So it is with everything that is designed. And I’ll tell you, everything, and I mean everything is being designed.

Will you be a leader of it?

 

Stay Positive & Go On, Design

Garth E. Beyer

 

The Struggle

Garth Beyer

Ralph Steadman

Please tell me I’m not the only one that has had an incredible idea for a piece of art (painting, crochet, whatever) but when going to produce it, it turns out like garbage. And not the progressive kind of garbage where you do it enough times until it turns out the way you want, but the kind of garbage that not even a hobo would appreciate.

While you can read this article, and yes, it’s worth the read, look at the artwork first. It’s incredibly inventive, creative, and if you stare at it long enough, it seems like something we may be able to replicate..well, to some garbagy extent.

Enter: The Struggle

The Struggle is the place of frustrating emotions: between disappointment and geniusness; between euphoria and defeat. We feel The Struggle when we want, so passionately, to be creative, yet, can’t make the jump from our desire to our creation.

Something I’ve learned from Jobs and Pixar is that stories don’t really have a shelf life. Toy Story is as great as it was in 1995. Want to talk about artwork? Look at all the ancient art we still drool over. The fact is, we may not be able to replicate an image we have in our minds, but that doesn’t matter too much.

What matters is that we tell a story with whatever image we end up creating.

For those still worried, you can still create an art piece if you need to add a few lines to tell the story behind it.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Let Your Inabilities Stop You From Telling Stories

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit: Ralph Steadman

Creative Destruction And Getting Rid Of The Old

Garth Beyer

I read an article by Albert Sumell I don’t want to be mooc’d in the Chronicle Review and it got me tearing up. It made me re-realize how human everyone is and how those in the older generation resist change because the change effects them more than anyone else. Sumell says, “When I talk about creative destruction with my students now, I am not quite as dogmatic as I used to be. I tell them that there are exceptions to every theory. I don t tell them that I hope that I am one of them.”

Change is constant, but so is fear. While there are those who will benefit from change, there will also be those who are deathly afraid of it. While we can’t stop it, we can at least empathize.

 

Stay Positive & Hey, It Might Be Us One Day

Garth E. Beyer