Report: Business Stalls, Frustrations Mount At WaPo

In the years after Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, business boomed. Droves of readers bought digital subscriptions, and the newsroom roughly doubled in size, adding hundreds more journalists.

But, according to Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson at The NY Times,  The Post’s business has stalled in the past year. As the breakneck news pace of the Trump administration faded away, readers have turned elsewhere, and the paper’s push to expand beyond Beltway coverage hasn’t compensated for the loss.

The organization is on track to lose money in 2022, after years of profitability, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances. The Post now has fewer than the three million paying digital subscribers it had hailed internally near the end of 2020, according to several people at the organization. Digital ad revenue generated by The Post fell to roughly $70 million during the first half of the year, about 15 percent lower than in the first half of 2021, according to an internal financial document reviewed by The New York Times.

Fred Ryan, the chief executive and publisher, in recent weeks has floated with newsroom leaders the possibility of cutting 100 positions, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions. The cuts, if they happen, could come through hiring freezes for open jobs or other ways. The newsroom now has about 1,000 people.

A spokeswoman for The Post said the organization was not reducing head count, and instead would be adding steadily to the newsroom and “exploring positions that should be repurposed to serve a larger, national and global audience.” She said the document showing ad revenue declines depicted an incomplete picture of The Post’s business, but she declined to detail how.

The Post’s newsroom remains one of the most formidable in the country. This year, it won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The publication has also, in recent years, opened hubs in Seoul and London to enable round-the-clock editing, and it has invested in coverage of topics such as personal technology, climate, and health and wellness.

Many news outlets, in addition to The Post, have experienced declining readership since former President Donald J. Trump left office. But two of The Post’s top competitors — The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — have added subscriptions since Mr. Trump left office.

The downturn at The Post has set off frustration internally. Some top executives are concerned that Mr. Ryan, picked by Mr. Bezos to be the publication’s top business executive, hasn’t moved decisively enough to expand coverage. Some have also become irritated by the company’s halting marketing efforts, which are guided by Mr. Ryan, and inconclusive talks about acquiring another large news organization.

Late last year, as part of a monthslong review of the company done by an internal group called the Strategic Review Team, Mr. Ryan told executives that The Post could be the definitive source of news and information for the English-speaking world, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. At a subsequent gathering of the executives, he said The Post should be an essential source of news, which at least one person interpreted as a less ambitious goal. Others in attendance, including Ms. Buzbee, said they did not see his comments that way.

The Post’s executives have had extensive internal talks about whether to buy other major news organizations, according to five people familiar with the matter. The outlets discussed have included The Associated Press, The Economist and The Guardian, some of the people said. The Strategic Review Team noted in a multipage memo that an acquisition might make sense to expand The Post’s audience internationally, where it is not as well known