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Wow! Washington Post has lost 200K+ subscriptions since non-endorsement, NPR reports [1]

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Date: 2024-10-28  

David Folkenflik at NPR is reporting that the Washington Post has lost more than 200,000 subscribers since Jeff Bezos squashed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris due to his cowering to Donald Trump. Even I wasn’t expecting the number to be that high already.

The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

Losing 9% of your paid circulation in just three days ain’t nothing. Marcus Brauchl, a former Post executive editor, told NPR that this was “a colossal number.” He continued: “The problem is, people don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.”

Um, we DO know why the decision was made. Former editor-at-large Robert Kagan made it very clear that the decision was about Bezos bending a knee to Trump to help his aerospace company should Trump win the election (he won’t). That’s part of why people are so angry.

The mass cancellations point “to the polarization of the times we’re living in, and the energy people feel about these issues,” Brauchli says. “This gave people a reason to act on this mood.”

Um, it’s more than just a “mood.” This is a country standing up to save our democracy. Let’s keep it up. Our voice IS being heard here. I’m proud to be among the more than 200,000 people who are saying loud and clear that we don’t want to live in a fascist dictatorship, and we don’t want to support wannabe oligarchs who are trying to enable that.

UPDATE

Thanks for all the comments. Personally, I don’t find too compelling the argument that this loss in revenue is just a drop in the bucket for Bezos so why bother? Or that we’re only hurting the WaPo journalists. If this revenue loss is just small change for Bezos, then he can easily make up the shortfall himself if he really cares about independent journalism and then keep everyone employed. And if he doesn’t, then why should I continue supporting the enterprise, particularly since I’ll aways doubt if a future article about Trump has somehow been toned down to avoid hurting Trump’s fee-fees and hurt Bezos’ other enterprises?

Also, my cancelled WaPo subscription is the final nail in the coffin after being dissatisfied with WaPo’s political coverage for some time now. Just today, WaPo had a headline about the NYC hatefest rally that started with “Trump calls for ‘inclusion’ at NYC rally..” or some BS similar to that (they since have seemed to delete the headline, but I saw it).

And just to be clear, I also support people cancelling their Amazon Prime subscription. I did so yesterday. But this debacle all started with the Washington Post, so I think it has to be part of the equation.

There are always disagreements about the effectiveness of boycotts, and I respect that. But I tend to be more of a pro-boycott kinda person. I think in many cases — including in this case — it’s one of the few ways for us to speak out collectively against something that we think is wrong. Just my two cents.

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