The Washington Post said Wednesday it is on track to break even by the end of 2026 after years of losses and cutbacks, and it permanently named acting publisher and CEO Jeff D’Onofrio to those roles. A spokesperson said the paper is “on its closest path to profitability in five years” and has sold more than 300,000 individual subscriptions year to date.
CNN reports the same day, the digital outlet formerly known as NOTUS relaunched for online readers as The Washington Sun, dropping the acronym for News of the United States amid a rapid expansion in Washington. Editor Tim Grieve wrote that “Washington journalism is in a moment of generational change. We’re rising to meet it.”
The timing was not accidental. Earlier this year NOTUS hired aggressively while the Post laid off hundreds of employees—about a third of its staff. Owner Robert Allbritton, who previously founded Politico, has framed the Post’s business struggles as an opening for competitors. The Atlantic and The New York Times have also hired numerous Post alumni.
The Post remains far larger, with roughly 500 newsroom staffers versus the Sun’s about 110. D’Onofrio, who took over from former publisher Will Lewis, wrote in a memo that the paper will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year and must “position it for the next 150 years.” He said news and opinion remain the core mission but that the company will add “new revenue streams that move us from breakeven to profitability, so we can reinvest in our journalism.”
Sun political columnist Dana Milbank, a 26-year Post veteran, described much of his time there as “a period of managed decline, shrinking budgets, shuttered bureaus, reduced coverage and round after round of buyouts and layoffs.” He compared newspaper industry job losses to the steel industry’s collapse from the 1970s to the 1990s and called Allbritton and Grieve’s “ambitions to rebuild” meaningful—without the cost structure that has hollowed out many papers.
The Sun aims to punch above its weight and help make Washington a two-newspaper town again, as it was until the Washington Star closed in 1981. The Post, still healthier than most papers, will continue to emphasize exclusives and investigations while pointing to a partial recovery from recent self-inflicted wounds.