On Monday, as Washington Post Co. chief executive Fred Ryan began to address his full staff regarding the news of his just announced departure, his microphone cut out. This was not at all his fault, of course, and yet it provided a fitting metaphor for his final years of his reign—a flaccid denouement to an epic run in which, after rescuing the moribund Post with the Bezos dowry, the company had become lethargic and flat-footed. Fitting, too, was the image of the svelte gray-haired Reaganite tapping away at the device (is this thing on…?) while several reporters began quietly delighting in his misfortune. “Couldn’t even say bye with a working mic,” one journalist scoffed afterward.