The question is, what message is WAPO's sudden decline telling us? Is it in the process of switching from far-left to something else? Is it a sign that the days of far-left media are coming to an end? I doubt it, but what?
Washington Post web traffic plummets nearly 90%
The Washington Post’s web traffic has cratered over the past four years, with daily active users dropping from a high of 22.5 million in January 2021 when outgoing President Joe Biden took office, to around 2.5-3 million by the middle of 2024, according to internal data shared with news website Semafor.
Internal financial and editorial struggles are rampant at the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet, according to various reports, with the paper’s rivals poaching talent, ad revenue falling dramatically, and layoffs on the horizon.
In April last year, the Washington City Paper reported that the nosedive in the Post’s traffic was so staggering that the paper stopped sharing its traffic information publicly. An ‘Audience & Traffic’ tag on the website, which had been regularly updated for years, has not been updated since January 2023.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Post’s advertising revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million in 2024.
Leaders at the paper are “struggling to convince staff that they have a clear editorial vision and continuing commitment to hard-hitting journalism” and rivals have poached top talent, with more exits on the way, the WSJ said, citing over a dozen insiders.
The reader exodus gathered steam in October last year, when Bezos decided to withhold an expected endorsement of outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential election against now-President-elect Donald Trump. In an op-ed, Bezos argued that endorsements from newspapers “do nothing to tip the scales in an election,” and “create a perception of bias.”
The move backfired, however, resulting in a reported 250,000 canceled subscriptions just weeks before election day, or about 10% of the Post's 2.5 million paid subscribers, according to NPR.
Last week, the Post announced it was laying off around 4% of its staff. The cuts will affect nearly 100 workers in the paper’s business division, including sales and marketing, as well as its IT units, it said.
The job cuts are “all in service of our greater goal to best position The Post for the future,” the paper’s statement said.
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