The Washington Post is dying, like Democracy does in darkness.
Cringe-worthy slogans aside, the Washington Post’s downfall is well deserved as the rag has become an ultra-biased outlet that not only proved itself to be an unreliable social narrator but proved that the ideology that it supported is an absolute failure.
So it’s not a surprise that over the course of the years, its audience has more or less completely abandoned it, leaving it a shadow of its former self, a Goliath in the news industry.
According to Semafor.com, WaPo has bled out its traffic and that bleed was heavy. From 2021, it’s lost 90 percent of its daily users:
Over the last four years, web traffic has cratered. According to internal data shared with Semafor in recent weeks, the Post’s regular daily traffic last year sunk to less than a quarter of what it was at its peak in January 2021. That month, the Post briefly reached a high of around 22.5 million daily active users following the attack. But by the middle of 2024, its daily users hovered around 2.5-3 million daily users.
Last year, Washington City Paper noted that the Post had stopped publicly disclosing its traffic numbers in press releases, after a 60% decline in monthly traffic. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Post’s revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million last year.
The Washington Post has had to face several misfortunes over the course of the last few years. The Post was on the losing side of several fights, both externally and internally, and continues to use losing strategies despite it being clear that it’s hurting the organization.
For instance, the social mood of the nation is definitely a pro-Trump mood, with a call to reduce the size and scope of government and clean up the corruption, yet the Post continues doing things to stand in the way of Trump’s goals such as attempting to find ways to trip up Trump’s cabinet picks.
The Washington Post did make the correct move of not endorsing Kamala Harris for president during the 2024 election, however, this did cause internal strife, which is also something that’s plagued the paper for some time now. A former cartoonist for the post, Ann Telnaes, created a political toon featuring Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, presenting a bag of money to a statue of Donald Trump. WaPo spiked the toon, causing Telnaes to quit, but not without applause from Jen Rubin, who has apparently resigned as well according to reports circulating on Monday.
The paper is reportedly now trying to move toward the center and away from its hard leftism, which is likely to upset even more staff at the paper, however more leftists leaving may not be the worst thing for it.
The Washington Post is probably going to have to radically alter itself to not only catch up to the modern era of conveying news, but it will have to abandon its ideological rigidity, which is probably easier said than done.
Even if the paper does manage to pull itself out of its leftist grave, winning America back over is going to be difficult. Not just because of the ire it’s cultivated for itself with the American people for its years of biased reporting and elitism, but because the landscape for obtaining and hearing news is changing so dramatically. WaPo will have to become innovative in order to stay afloat.
Otherwise, it may fade into the background, and few people will miss it.
(Author’s Note: Edited post-publication to reflect updates)
