WaPo staffer not sure paper can get better as Bezos-owned outlet sheds 250,000 subscribers over endorsement fiasco

The Washington Put up is reportedly paying the worth with its liberal readers after the Bezos-owned paper introduced it might not be making an endorsement within the 2024 presidential race, which has despatched shockwaves by its newsroom. 

NPR reported Tuesday that The Put up has shed greater than a whopping 250,000 subscribers because it revealed its editorial board wouldn’t formally endorse Vice President Kamala Harris after it had deliberate to take action. 

In line with NPR, it marks roughly a ten% lack of The Put up’s 2.5 million paid subscribers. The most affordable paid subscription providing at the moment listed for the Put up is $40 per yr, which might imply at a minimal the paper is shedding $10 million in income.

WASHINGTON POST REPORTS LIBERALS ARE CANCELING SUBSCRIPTIONS OVER PAPER’S DECISION NOT TO ENDORSE VP HARRIS

NPR reported that The Put up has shed greater than 200,000 subscribers because it revealed it might not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. (Karwai Tang/WireImage | Eric Baradat/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)

A veteran Washington Put up insider tells Fox Information Digital that Monday’s preliminary NPR report noting the large drop in subscribers was “the discuss of the newsroom.”

“Persons are outraged at such a boneheaded choice,” the insider stated. “Only in the near past, [Washington Post CEO and publisher Will] Lewis’ workforce was bragging about stemming subscription losses and the way we had ‘inexperienced shoots’ of a acquire of 4,000 subscribers thus far this yr. That’s been worn out in a nanosecond.” 

“It’s a steep gap to climb out of, and it’s solely going to worsen as soon as the election is over and extra folks cancel,” the supply added.

When requested whether or not the Put up can climb out of the opening or if the injury is completed, they replied “No concept. A whole lot of injury has been achieved.”

A spokesperson for The Washington Put up declined to remark. 

WASHINGTON POST UNION, STAFFERS REVOLT OVER DECISION NOT TO ENDORSE A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, BLAME BEZOS

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a rally in Houston, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photograph/Susan Walsh)

A trio of Put up reporters wrote Sunday that constructive inner momentum at their place of employment “got here to a halt” on Friday when Lewis declared the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” paper wouldn’t endorse a presidential candidate. Within the days since, an onslaught of readers posted on social media about canceling subscriptions in protest, prompting Washington Put up reporters to stress over what number of subscribers would finally stroll away. 

“A cancellation motion swept by social networks. As a substitute of utilizing an inner analytics software to examine site visitors to their very own tales, some Put up journalists used it to chart the hovering variety of subscribers visiting the shopper account web page that permits them to cancel their subscriptions,” Put up reporters Manuel Roig-Franzia, Herb Scribner and Laura Wagner wrote in a bit headlined “For The Put up, extra outrage from readers who say they’ve canceled.” 

“On social media, sharing screenshots of Put up subscription cancellation confirmations grew to become greater than only a factor,” the Put up reporters continued. “It was a political assertion primarily coming from the American left, enraged by reviews in The Put up and elsewhere that the newspaper’s editorial writers had drafted an endorsement of the Democratic nominee.” 

BEFORE NON-ENDORSEMENT DECISION, WASHINGTON POST CALLED TRUMP ‘DREADFUL’ AND ‘WORST PRESIDENT OF MODERN TIMES’

Washington Put up writer and CEO William Lewis (Elliott O’Donovan for The Washington Put up by way of Getty Pictures)

The Put up additionally famous that Lewis has “sought to tamp down hypothesis” that the paper’s billionaire proprietor, Jeff Bezos, made the choice with the intention to assist former President Trump. Nonetheless, The Put up beforehand reported that Bezos was behind the transfer “in accordance with 4 individuals who have been briefed on the choice.”

Lewis has claimed the choice to finish presidential endorsements “was made totally internally and neither marketing campaign nor candidate was given a heads up or consulted,” and has advised involved staffers that “it’s the flawed factor for an unbiased newspaper to inform readers learn how to vote in a presidential election.”

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The Put up introduced on Friday that it might not offer an endorsement within the upcoming presidential election or any future one, in what writer Lewis stated was a “returning to our roots.” 

An endorsement of Harris was reportedly drafted and able to publish earlier than it was all of a sudden shelved. The paper, which has been reliably hostile to former President Trump for years, has endorsed a Democrat for president in each election since 1976, apart from when it skipped one in 1988. 

Fox Information’ Brian Flood contributed to this report.