The Washington Post is collapsing, and only Donald Trump can save them

Jeff Bezos's prized paper is losing $100 million a year.

There’s only one man who can save the jobs of the corporate and institutional stenographers who work for The Washington Post, and it’s not who they think it is.

A fascinating article from Puck News has documented the ongoing collapse of The Washington Post.

Here’s the too long; didn't read summary of the paywalled article:

• The Washington Post is now losing $100 million a year.

• During the Trump era, subscriptions were growing 50 percent year over year. Today, The Post is churning paid subscribers at a catastrophic rate.

• Four years ago, The Post averaged 139 million monthly visitors. At the end of 2023, that number was down to under 60 million, according to insiders.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, and he immediately proceeded to invest significant amounts of capital into the newsroom. Most of the corporate press credits Bezos with turning around Washington D.C.’s historic institutional paper, but that’s not what really happened.

Despite staffing up (doubling the newsroom roster), subscriber growth was pretty flat until the Trump era. Bezos timed the market quite well. He was merely lucky enough to catch the tailwinds brought forth by Trump’s ascendancy to 1600 Penn.

It wasn’t that The Washington Post was suddenly producing a good product. No, it was the Blue Anon Russian collusion fantasies and the like that filled the front page each and every day. That’s what really captured the attention of the Beltway WaPo faithful. Suddenly, The Post became a must-read, spinning fairytale after fairytale of a Bad Orange Man who threatened to capsize all of their supposedly righteous institutions.

In 2017, with a headcount surging to over 3000 employees, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" became the new slogan for the newspaper, positioning The Post as the antithesis to the comic book villain they had spawned. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that The Washington Post positioned themselves as the apparent defenders of democracy, while labeling Trump as the fascist authoritarian dissolver of norms. He was a man who could do no right, but a man who served to drive subscriptions through the roof.

Now, fast forward to today. The “bad guy” has been defeated by the “democracy defenders,” and there’s a cadaver in the White House. But now, their sales team can’t get anyone to sign up for The Washington Post. That’s because their grand antagonist is no longer the center of attention in Washington. In the meantime, Jeff Bezos is slashing hundreds of jobs in a desperate ploy to turn the margins around.

Paradoxically enough, the progressive corporate drones who work at The Washington Post may only have one man standing in the way of their imminent unemployment.

And that man isn’t Jeff Bezos.

It’s Donald Trump. They need their “Bad Orange Man” back.