Every St. Patrick’s Day, Fred Ryan, the publisher and C.E.O. of The Washington Post, hosts a party at the George Town Club on Wisconsin Avenue for various members of the D.C. political-media establishment. Attired in green or Irish plaid, the svelte, gray-haired media executive holds court among some old friends from the Reagan White House; some senior Post executives and journalists; and various fixtures of what one attendee described as “Old Washington.”
It may sound pretentious and stuffy, but that’s also sort of the point—the event, after all, is a reminder of the station that Ryan holds in the Beltway, where he is the ultimate smooth insider, a business guy who looks like a political guy, and vice versa. His elan and connectivity presumably explain, at least in part, Jeff Bezos’s decision to put him at the helm of the Post shortly after he bought the company in 2013 from the Graham family.
