JUST IN: Washington Post’s Viewership Craters To New Low

With one week to go before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated for a second time, the mainstream media is looking weaker than ever. A cratering in the Washington Post’s digital viewership is only the latest symptom of a fracturing media landscape that is being decimated as left-leaning readers tune out the news in a bid to escape the return of the MAGA movement to Washington, D.C.

The city’s flagship paper, which once commanded between 22 and 23 million visitors a day, has slid to just a tiny fraction of that, forcing the Post to revamp its strategy about how to cover a second Trump presidency in the face of a dissatisfied audience. Subscription and revenue shortfalls are taking a toll on the once-venerable paper, which commanded upward of a $100 million valuation last year, according to sources close to the media newsroom who add that editors are failing to make a compelling pitch for their vision of journalism in the age of Trump. Internally, Post leadership has indicated that they hope to have as many as 200 million regular users in the next several years, a far cry from what the paper’s website experiences today: the Post had just 54 million unique visitors in 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal, down from 114 million in November of 2020 when Trump lost his reelection campaign.

It appears the paper will not be able to repeat its successful strategy, which was first employed under the banner “Democracy Dies in Darkness” shortly after Trump first took office and garnered an additional 3 million new subscribers by January of 2021. The departure of Trump from the White House and the first term of President Joe Biden took its toll on the Post as enthusiasm for politics waned, causing its customer base to contract. “Our industry is in the middle of a major transformation,” a Post spokeswoman told the Journal. “The Post is committed to innovating, creating and leading the way forward to reach all Americans with nonpartisan news and thought-provoking reported views.”

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who has owned the Post since 2013, last year infamously killed the editorial department’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and emphasized in his own op-ed shortly before the election that papers like the Post are “increasingly talk[ing] only to a certain elite.” More than 250,000 subscribers reportedly canceled their memberships after the decision, which Bezos said prevented the release of an op-ed that may “create a perception of bias.” A person close to the company told the Journal that many of those former members have since returned.

The source added that year-over-year losses at the Post were 30% greater in 2024, while revenue fell to $174 million from $190 million in 2023, missing an internal target set by management. On Tuesday, the paper announced another round of layoffs as part of its cost-cutting strategy, a shift that will affect at least 100 employees, or about 4% of the workforce. These layoffs reportedly did not hit the newsroom.

Other media institutions, such as CNN, NBC, and MSNBC, are not immune from the ennui affecting readers and viewers of staples within the media landscape. Depressed audience numbers have been a constant across the board, a sign that President-elect Trump’s second coming is encouraging more liberals to tune out as they weigh whether or not to continue the resistance. So far, the 2017 Women’s March, a million-strong visceral reaction to Trump’s inauguration, has not set a return date for later this month.