(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The Washington Post continues losing its subscribers after the newspaper editors and owner Jeff Bezos decided not to endorse former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Semafor reported that traffic to the Post’s website had tanked over the last four years. According to internal data discovered by the news source recently, the newspaper’s regular 2024 daily traffic sunk to less than a quarter of its peak in January 2021, when the Post reached approximately 22.5 million people using the website daily. However, by the middle of 2024, only about 2.5-3 million people were using the website daily.
In April 2024, Washington City Paper wrote that the newspaper stopped publicly disclosing its traffic numbers in press releases after discovering a 60% decline in monthly traffic.
The Wall Street Journal also recently reported that the Post’s revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million in 2024.
Headline USA also pointed out that after almost losing $77 million in 2024, the newspaper started firing people, resulting in 4% of the Post’s employees losing their jobs.
“The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are,” the newspaper’s leadership wrote in its statement. “Changes across our business functions are all in service of our greater goal to best position the Post for the future.”
The Post also fired one of its senior editors at the end of last year. Among those who left the newspaper willfully were an anti-Trump cartoonist, a representative of the controlled opposition and a conservative columnist.
The Post’s leadership allegedly decided not to endorse Harris before the 2024 election because of the recent financial troubles.
“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer, William Lewis, wrote. “Our job at the Washington Post is to provide … nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds.”
Bezos also defended the decision not to endorse Harris, adding that the newspaper should hire more conservatives.
