Item — HN Reader

The Atlantic, WSJ, The Economist, Politico all come to mind as profitable.

I don’t think it’s anomalous to have a major national newspaper that’s profitable. And WaPo should have been absolutely primed for Trump II given its long time DC focus. They historically had the best political coverage of DC.

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> They historically had the best political coverage of DC

And then Bezos replaced veteran leaders with ideological leaders from the Murdoch empire. Then Bezos put his thumb on the scale and vetoed the paper's presidential endorsement in 2024, and 250,000 subscribers cancelled. Then Bezos dictated that the paper's opinion section will censor any idea that does not support conservative/libertarian/free-market ideology and 75,000 more subscribers cancelled.

Maybe the ideological reorientation along with savage cuts to the newsroom has something to do the loss of subscribers and the dire financial straits used to justify even more cuts to the newsroom?

There is a market for quality, fact-checked journalism that you can't get on podcasts and social media. But when you force that journalism through a right-wing ideological filter, you destroy the intrinsic value of independent journalism.

If your claim is that the Post had a viable business available to it as a sort of GoFundMe project for the political opposition, this makes sense. Otherwise, it's hard to see how an org with 2500 employees but without much more national appeal than Politico or the Atlantic was going to compete long term.

I don't know how to quantify "national appeal", but the Post had about 2.5 million paid subscribers in 2023 and ~800 newsroom staff, while The Atlantic had about 1.1 million paid subscribers and ~200 newsroom staff.

Now the Post is down to ~2 million paid subscribers and 500 newsroom staff.

I don't think the Post was known as a slanted project for "the political opposition" during red or blue administrations, but it's got that reputation now.

My claim is that this new slant is responsible for the bulk of the paper's loss of paid subscribers. There's a market for rigorous, fact-checked reporting. Degrading that makes the business worse, not better.

What's the other national American newspaper --- not newsmagazine, 95% of what the Atlantic runs isn't reported --- besides the WSJ that's doing well right now?

Other than the NYT and WSJ, the only national example I can think of is The Guardian's US operation, but that one is supported by a trust plus recurring donations from readers.

There are some good regional examples that show people will still pay enough for rigorous, old-school, fact-checked journalism to make it sustainable.

Minneapolis Star Tribune: ~200 newsroom staff, roughly $220M annual revenue, solidly profitable, seven Pulitzers.

Seattle Times: ~600 employees (not sure how many in the newsroom), marginally profitable after paying legacy pension obligations, nine Pulitzers.

Guardian US: ~110 editorial staff in the US, no subscribers but ~270,000 recurring and ~170,000 annual one-time donations, one Pulitzer but maybe that one should be shared with Snowden.

404media: tiny, 5 people, but solid investigative journalism, national distribution, and some pretty impressive scoops, and it makes a profit from subscriptions.

Agree, if Bezos hadn’t alienated the readership, they’d probably be doing well.

I used to look up to him before he became an obsequious traitor.

Seems false. The Atlantic Monthly, to take an example --- another publication I subscribe to --- is an order of magnitude smaller than the Post. If the Post wanted to run the Atlantic's business successfully, they could; they'd just have to lay almost everybody else in the company off.

What seems false?

That the Post's predicament is a consequence of Bezos partisan editorial decisions. I don't like those decisions either, but I don't think they get close to the core problem the Post faces.

Seems false.

Indeed. It's really, really something when I can even entertain the idea of 'I'll go to Wal-Mart, it's awful but at least it's a lot morally better than supporting Amazon'. Yikes!

Of those only the journal is a newspaper. The Atlantic is a magazine and economist/politico are focused on a single news sector

The network effects. The strong get stronger and grow larger, creating a fly wheel. On X.com there are citizen journalists publishing and reposting tons of hyper local news, and I assume it also hits FB but I don’t use that. We don’t need as many proper media companies as we did decades ago. The Tier 3 media outlets died long ago, now WaPo tried to be tier 1 but it failed, and will die as a has-been slowly. Probably should switch to Washington DC gossip and scoops as its forte.

I don't want a world where we rely on citizen journalists. The value of the organizations is in providing credibility (or at least a predictable understanding of their bias). Just because some rando sounds convincing does not mean what he is presenting is any kind of credible representation of the truth