With digital subscriptions and digital advertising profit stagnating, the company is on a pace to lose plutocrats this time.
In the times after Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, business boomed. Droves of compendiums bought digital subscriptions, and the newsroom roughly doubled in size, adding hundreds more intelligencers.
But The Post’s business has stalled at one time. As the snappy news pace of the Trump administration faded down, compendiums have turned away, and the paper’s drive to expand beyond Beltway content hasn’t compensated for the loss.
The association is on track to lose plutocrats in 2022, after times of profitability, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances. The Post now has smaller than the three million paying digital subscribers it had hailed internally near the end of 2020, according to several people at the association. Digital announcement profit generated by The Post fell to roughly$ 70 million during the first half of the time, about 15 percent lower than in the first half of 2021, according to an internal fiscal document reviewed by The New York Times.
Fred Ryan, the principal superintendent, and publisher, in recent weeks, has floated with newsroom leaders the possibility of cutting 100 positions, according to several people with knowledge of the conversations. The cuts, if they are, could come through hiring freezes for open jobs or other ways. The newsroom now has about,000 people.
A spokesman for The Post said the association wasn't reducing headcount, and rather would be adding steadily to the newsroom and “ exploring positions that should be repurposed to serve a larger, public and global followership. ” She said the document showing announcement profit declines depicted a deficient picture of The Post’s business, but she declined to detail how.
Further than 20 people with knowledge of The Post’s business operations spoke for this composition. utmost of them would do so only on the condition of obscurity, to cover their connections inside the association.
The Post’s newsroom remains one of the most redoubtable in the country. This time, it won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on the Jan. 6 hoot at theU.S. Capitol. The publication has also, in recent times, opened capitals in Seoul and London to enable round the- timepiece editing, and it has invested in the content of motifs similar to a particular technology, climate, and health and heartiness.
Numerous news outlets, in addition to The Post, have endured declining readership since former President Donald. Trump left office. But two of The Post’s top challengers — 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 directors are concerned that Mr. Ryan was picked byMr. Bezos to be the publication’s top business superintendent hasn’t moved decisively enough to expand the content. Some have also come bothered by the company’s halting marketing sweats, which are guided by. Ryan, and inconclusive addresses about acquiring another large news association.
Ryan’s focus on productivity and office attendance in the newsroom has also been a source of pressure. He has expressed his belief to members of his leadership platoon that there were multitudinous low players in the newsroom who demanded to be managed. He has covered how numerous staff members come into the office and has counted new measures to impel people to return to work, including pitfalls of shots, several people at The Post said.
Numerous of the publication’s top leaders, including its top editor, Sally Buzbee, is promoting tolerance. They say the company’s sweats to broaden content will ultimately attract new compendiums and lead to fiscal success.
Buzbee said the newsroom was in the process of adding 150 positions. Mr. Ryan; Joy Robins, The Post’s principal profit officer; and. Buzbee, who joined in 2021, is overseeing a new action called “ 5 by 25, ” and trouble to reach five million total digital subscribers by 2025.
“ There’s no question that we need to diversify what people come to us for, ”Ms. Buzbee said in an interview. “ That’s our whole strategy. ”
Ryan declined to note this composition. The spokesman for The Post noted that Mr. Ryan had supported investment, citing the creation of transnational news capitals, an action aimed at youngish compendiums, and cooperation with Imagine Entertainment, the Hollywood plant.
“ These investments are aligned with our strategic road chart, and we anticipate to see returns, both in consumer and advertising profit, on this work in the coming time, ” the spokesman said.
Mr. Bezos, one of the world’s richest people, has said an independent newsroom should be tone-sustaining. He was a regular presence at The Post for the first many times after he bought the company, but retreated kindly from the review’s operations during the Covid- 19 epidemic, according to a person with knowledge of his relations. drone and phone meetings with Mr. Bezos, formerly held every other week, have come less frequent, as have passages by Post directors to Seattle, where. Bezos lives, to solicit his input.
Bezos is still engaged, still, importing in during budgeting season and sharing in calls. He declined to note for this composition, but the Post spokesman said any suggestion that Mr. Bezos had come less interested in The Post was “ absolutely false. ”
Important of the decision- timber, however, falls on Mr. Ryan, 67. A former functionary in the Reagan administration and principal superintendent of Politico, he came to The Post in 2014. He replaced Katharine Weymouth, an inheritor of the Graham family, which was The Post’s longtime proprietor. Wenner. Bezos named him in 2014, he thanked him for taking the job, adding that Mr. Ryan was “ agitated to roll up his sleeves. ”
The Post’s sweats to diversify its journalism beyond political content extend back until at least the summer of 2016. At that time, elderly editors considered a plan that would expand the review’s content to temper a decline in readership during what they allowed would be the presidential administration of Hillary Clinton, according to two people with knowledge of the offer.
The plan, law- named Operation Skyfall, was set away after Mr. Trump won the presidential election.
As the significance of moving beyond Washington content came more critical over the once time, Mr. Ryan has given some mixed signals about how ambitiously he wanted to move.
Late last Time, as part of a monthslong review of the company done by an internal group called the Strategic Review Team, Mr. Ryan told directors 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 posterior gathering of the directors, he said The Post should be an essential source of news, which at least one person interpreted as a lower ambitious thing. Others are in attendance, including. Buzbee said they didn't see his comments that way.
The Post’s directors have had expansive internal addresses about whether to buy other major news associations, according to five people familiar with the matter. The outlets bandied 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 accession might make sense to expand The Post’s followership internationally, where it isn't as well known.
So far, Mr. Ryan has concentrated on erecting The Post’s capacity for covering new areas rather than acquiring rivals.
Ryan’s decision to scrap some of the review’s brand marketing juggernauts has been another source of pressure among directors at The Post, according to two people with knowledge of the paper’s branding strategy. The review hired the enterprises Ogilvy and Buddha Jones to produce advertising for The Post, but some of those juggernauts were noway extensively distributed.
A picture of one of those juggernauts, which was noway used, showed a satiny shelter announcement featuring the watchword “ We don’t just break news. We break ground. ” The Post also mugged two journalists, Sarah Kaplan and Darryl Fears, for an announcement about the review’s sweats to cover the changing climate, but that spot hasn’t run.
One person familiar with The Post’s marketing strategy said the company was planning a major brand marketing drive to promote its new content areas, including climate. Last time, The Post vented a crusade on “Jeopardy! ” around the Afghanistan Papers, its disquisition into the secret history of the war in Afghanistan.
The conversations about budget reductions come from ASMR. Ryan has expressed annoyance with elderly newsroom leaders at what he sees as a lack of productivity by some intelligencers at the paper. Last fall, he asked for the company’s principal information officer to pull records on which days workers held videoconference meetings, as a way to judge product situations, and set up that smaller meetings passed on Fridays, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
He has also grown decreasingly frustrated that some Post staff members are still not in the office at least three days a week, the company’s policy.
In recent weeks, Mr. Ryan asked for correctional letters to be drafted and transferred to workers who hadn't made any appearance in the office this time, according to three people with knowledge of the conversations. He eventually decided that the letters shouldn't be transferred and that the people should be called rather. The Post spokesman said Mr. Ryan ate hand input on the return- to office policy.
Some workers have taken their frustrations directly. Ryan. A letter addressed to Post operation and transferred tour. Ryan this month from intelligencers who covered the Covid- 19 epidemic cited “ grave enterprises ” about the policy.
“ similar opinions are extremely particular and consequential, ” the letter said, “ and we prompt operation to allow workers to make these opinions without fear of discipline from their employer. ”