Washington Post Names Bollinger to Its Board

The Washington Post Company announced its nomination of University President Lee Bollinger to its internal Board of Directors on Friday.

The 10-member Board, which includes Warren Buffett and Melinda Gates, will vote on Bollinger's candidacy at its annual May 10 meeting. As a Board member, Bollinger would be responsible for advising the Company on how to manage its business holdings and operations, a situation which has raised some eyebrows.

Bollinger confirmed that he will accept the position if elected, and said that he has been in communication with the chairman of the Company for some months about the nomination and expected appointment.

The Washington Post Company currently owns a litany of media outlets, including The Washington Post, Newsweek magazine, and the online magazine Slate.com,

The company's fastest-growing holding is the test preparation corporation Kaplan, Inc. According to Rima Calderon, Director of Corporate Communications of the Washington Post Company, Kaplan is the single greatest contributor to the Company's profits. She said that the Company hopes Bollinger will be an asset in helping to develop its education business.

"He has a lot to offer in terms of his knowledge of education," Calderon said.

Bollinger said that he is very excited about being a part of the Company at such a crucial juncture in the industry, when various media sources are trying to restructure their services by absorbing new technology. "It's an area that I care enormously about," Bollinger said.

Calderon acknowledged that the announcement of his nomination, rather than a full election, was "a little bit unusual." The reason it was announced in this manner, she said, has to do with how shareholders were informed of the decision, within legal compliance. A proxy statement was mailed to shareholders on Friday to inform them of the nomination and voting procedures, which was the first time they were informed of Bollinger's candidacy.

On May 10th, all current members will face re-election, in addition to voting on Bollinger's nomination. "It's a real election process.. ... It's not a formality," Calderon said, though she added that she wasn't aware of any board nominee who was not subsequently elected.

Some observers have raised concerns about the potential conflict of interest incurred by Bollinger, an expert on First Amendment rights and one of the nation's educational leaders, formalizing his relationship with one of the nation's leading news media conglomerates.

Jeff Chester, who runs the media policy public interest group Center for Digital Democracy in Washington D.C., is concerned about the nomination's implications for a loss of objectivity and independent thought about the media from within Columbia and the larger academic community.

"Here's one of the nation's foremost first amendment scholars, in essence sort of surrendering his intellectual independence to work for a media company," Chester said. "It's going to silence him, it's going to neutralize him-and the public will lose an independent academic voice."

Bollinger said that he sees no conflict of interest in becoming a Board Director. "I've thought this through carefully," he said. "I'm a first amendment scholar and it's important to maintain the complete independence of what I write on the press. They [the Washington Post Company] understand that; they respect that."

According to Bollinger, legal counsels at both the University and at the Post concluded that his affiliation need not compromise his objectivity.

Calderon also said that the Post Company does not see any cause for concern about a potential conflict of interest, either with Bollinger's involvement with the company at large or specifically regarding his link to Kaplan.

"I can't imagine students doing anything just because the President was involved in it," she said. "Columbia students are very independent.