Washington Post Rewards Publisher With $1.6 Million Annually For Running Washington Post Into the Ground

Even with the profits from its scam Kaplan correspondence courses, the Washington Post company performs just as dismally as an investment as it does as a newspaper. But that hasn't stopped publisher Katharine Weymouth from earning a "base salary" of $625,000 per year along with another half-million or so in bonuses and stock. Meanwhile, throngs of actual reporters and editors from the newspaper are dismissed with seemingly weekly regularity, and the paper continues to fail miserably both as a journalistic enterprise and a business. But Katharine is the "granddaughter of the Post’s legendary Katharine Graham," so what the hell, just shovel a million dollars into her offshore accounts every year. She probably really needs the money!

 Footnoted reports:  

Companies craft their own formulae to define good performance, but – from the outside – The Post’s performance isn’t impressive. The Post’s stock declined 1.38% in 2010, trailing the S&P 500 by 10 percentage points. Taking dividends into account, it returned just 2%, trailing the S&P 500 by 13 points. It’s not doing much better so far in 2011, considering a decline of 0.47%.

Besides Weymouth and her uncle, Chairman/CEO Donald Graham, (who once again declined both a raise and a bonus), the proxy indicates that there are a couple of other family members who are helping out at either The Post or one of its subsidiaries. Katharine Weymouth’s mom, veteran journalist Elizabeth “Lally” Weymouth, left Newsweek after The Post sold the magazine last fall and is now an Editor-at-Large at The Post, earning a base salary of $300,000 per year. And Donald Graham’s daughter, Laura O’Shaughnessy, is working as the CEO and president of a Post subsidiary, Social Code LLC. According to the proxy, she got a $40,000 bonus for her work last year and will earn a base salary in 2011 of $150,000.

At least Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer are safe in their positions! Wait, what? [ Footnoted via Wonkette Champion Operative "Matt N."]