WaPo Grasps for New Direction

The Washington Post, like most major publications, has experienced an audience surge during the Trump years, when readers flocked to stories about the controversial Republican administration. Now, the Post is facing a slump that has triggered some soul-searching at the paper, including over the need to invest more in coverage areas outside of politics, according to people familiar with the news outlet’s operations and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

One document provided a stark snapshot: The site had about 66 million monthly unique visitors in October, down 28% from last year. Most major publishers have suffered audience declines from 2020, when national politics and the Covid-19 pandemic lifted readership. Several of the Post’s rivals, including the New York Times, the Journal, Vox Media and CNN, had smaller declines in that time frame, according to the document, which cited data from Comscore. Other politics-focused publications, including the Hill and Politico, had traffic declines greater than the Post’s during that period, according to the document.

The Post’s digital subscriber growth, meanwhile, has begun to stagnate. The outlet had 2.7 million digital subscribers as of October, according to the internal document, down from roughly three million in January. Some of the people familiar with Post’s operations said the publisher is expected to end up roughly flat in digital subscriptions for the year.

The Post has been working for more than two years to evolve its offerings and attract new readers, “knowing that news consumption is cyclical,” a Post spokeswoman said in a statement. "We’ve been deliberate in our strategy work and are seeing the results of our investments across the company, particularly with the growth of the newsroom, the broadening of our coverage and the sophistication of our storytelling tools.”

Other newsrooms have pressed to expand, even before this year. The Journal had about 50 million monthly unique visitors as of October, according to Comscore. Executives at the outlet had discussed a plan last year to double its audience by the end of fiscal 2024, people familiar with the matter say.

A spokesman for Journal parent Dow Jones declined to comment on the company’s plans for audience growth. Dow Jones executives said at a September 2020 investor event that the company planned to double its membership business over the long term.

At the New York Times, a substantial portion of subscription growth is coming from low-cost digital offerings such as games, its cooking product and its product-recommendation site Wirecutter. The Times in November warned that subscription growth could come under pressure in the fourth quarter as promotional pricing is phased out.