More Than 60,000 Washington Post Customers Canceled Subscriptions After Jeff Bezos Axed 44% of Reporters

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

Mar 14th, 2026, 5:46 pm


The sweeping job cuts that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos supported led to more than 60,000 customers canceling their digital subscriptions last month, according to a report from The New York Times on Saturday.

The story — titled “How Jeff Bezos Upended the Washington Post” — looked at how the Amazon founder has played a larger role at his paper in recent years. Bezos was able to convince executive editor Matt Murray to stick around late last year and handle hundreds of job cuts alongside then-CEO and publisher Will Lewis, according to the report.

WaPo ended up laying off roughly 350 reporters out of 800 in February — accounting for 44% of its journalists. “The sports and books departments were folded, and the metro section was gutted,” The Times reported. “Most international correspondents and editors were laid off.”

In response, more than 60,000 digital subscribers ditched the paper in the week following the job cuts, according to the NYT report.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/more-than-60000-washington-post-customers-canceled-subscriptions-after-jeff-bezos-axed-44-of-reporters/

[Roy Rolling]

1. Vote With Your Wallet

I cancelled mine last year after decades. Bezos doesn’t need my money, I don’t need his propaganda.

Democracy died in darkness.

And ETTD.

If it isn’t Musk or Zuckerberg, it’s Bezos. That’s the oligarch playbook, and why T-hole thinks he’s the western Putin. From a recent Bernie Sanders tweet:

[Gum Logger]

4. It shows they have lots of spare change

[Bengus81]

19. The only thing I have on that list is Paramount + which will be toast in August

I've had that subscription before it was called Paramount+

[OldBaldy1701E]

11. "Bezos doesn't need my money..."

Which is why 'voting with your wallet' doesn't affect them.

Denying those rich assholes is one thing.

Stopping them is far more productive and acceptable. They can outspend entire states. Going toe to toe with someone with money in this modern country is a mistake. They can play that game until the cows come home. And, once we do make things slightly less than they are now, those same rich folks will just move and leave us with the mess.

I do not find this acceptable. It is sad that so many seem to be fine with it.

[Bengus81]

24. They rely on advertisers to keep the paper in the black. Subscribers leave and so do

advertisers. Same with a TV shows,radio.

[mdbl]

26. I'm sure they can get mypillow to renew their ad subscription

[OldBaldy1701E]

36. Yes, they do.

But, they won't offer one cent of their own wealth to save anything that they decide is not worth their time, irregardless of the common good that comes from said item.

So, they will just close it down.

What do the rich lose? Nothing. They set things up that way. No personal risk and no personal loss. Those are for losers.

The rest of us lose everything. But, we still worship the ground they walk on. Even as they destroy everything just to keep from parting with one coin.

[QueerDuck]

2. We still receive an occasional "please come back" email from them.

I thought about creating a filter that automatically dumps all WP emails into the spam/trash. But... it's fun to see them beg.

[wolfie001]

3. Greedy scum controlling the narrative

[joshdawg]

8. That's runaway Capitalism for ya.

All about whoever has the most money has the most power, and the arrogance that goes with it.
BTW, Fuck trump and his maggot minions.

[perdita9]

5. I cancelled my subscription in November 2024

As did hundreds of thousands of other people.

When will Jeff Bezos and the other billionaires figure out that Trump is bad for business?

[Tetrachloride]

6. Make a new newspaper

or work for David Lee Roth

[eringer]

7. Not Worth the 99 cents per month I was Paying

After 35 plus years of getting the post seven days a week I dropped the paper when Bezos declined to endorse Harris. They offered and accepted the 99 cent on line version for about a year and then cancelled altogether. I get my news here, The Guardian and Politico. All free from cost and Bezos.

[COL Mustard]

9. Many of us had already left The Post

I’d been a subscriber for nearly 40 years, and it’s my hometown newspaper, so leaving was hard to do. Bezos is clearly intent on running the paper into the ground, and kissing Trump”s ass.

It was a sad day when I left them, but the days of Woodward and Bernstein are gone forever. What’s left is just a shell.

[TheRickles]

10. 60k sounds like a big loss, but the total number of digital subscribers to WaPo is 2.5M.

So that's a loss of about 2%, not enough to have much of an impact, unfortunately.

A side note, neither this DU summary nor the Mediaite article did this quick bit of internet sleuthing to find the number that puts this loss in context. Perhaps the original NYT article does this, but I don't subscribe so I can't look it up. Overall, there's a decline in numeracy afoot in the US, as so often numbers are tossed around without any way to compare stats - in the sports pages, in essays about the economy, political polling, etc. I confess to being a bit of a math nerd, but this is just a matter of basic arithmetic, not calculus.

OK, end of rant. Your regular programming will now resume....

[marybourg]

12. It's not only the decline in numeracy,

It’s the use of news to fuel partisan propaganda. On both sides.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. This is how the NYT framed it (the piece is a lengthy long-form thing that is typical of something in the magazine)

How Jeff Bezos Upended The Washington Post

(snip)

After Mr. Bezos talked Mr. Murray into staying around Thanksgiving and gave him a major role in the layoff plan, Mr. Murray and his deputies took their cues from Mr. Bezos. They examined customer data to assess which sections generated the most readership and compared that against the cost to produce that coverage.

The math was not easy. Foreign reporting was expensive, for example, but it was essential to keeping The Post competitive on national security, a key beat for The Post. There was no way to hit their target without affecting the scope of the newsroom’s coverage.

In the end, the sports and books departments were folded, and the metro section was gutted. Most international correspondents and editors were laid off, including those in the Middle East, just weeks before the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

More than 60,000 readers canceled their digital subscriptions that week, according to an internal document reviewed by The Times. (A spokeswoman for The Post disputed that figure but declined to provide an alternate number.)

(snip)

So the context was that this was a reaction to further gutting of what would be typical "for the locals" coverage sections of the paper.

[TheRickles]

15. Interesting snip about the content's context- thanks. But still no numerical context by the Times.

Everybody's doing it, even the NYT!

[BumRushDaShow]

16. I haven't read the whole thing yet

but the narrative (like a story-telling style timeline), earlier references and links to NPR's article from a radio interview done in October 2024. A blip from that -

More than 250,000 subscribers have left 'Washington Post' over withheld endorsement

(snip)

FOLKENFLIK: This is, you know, pretty much perceived by everybody I've talked to in the Post as something that will go down as a historic moment - a kind of debacle. The numbers that I reported came from two people with direct knowledge. I must say I've gone to the Post a number of times to give them a chance to shoot it down. They have not done so. They said, we're a privately held company, and we're not going to give out that figure publicly. But that would be about 10% of their paid subscribers - all digital and paper paid subscribers - right now. It's something of a calamity for them. It's a collapse of many millions of dollars in revenue, although not all cancellations take effect instantaneously.

(snip)

[TheRickles]

22. 10% is getting serious! Thanks for tracking this down.

That was the original reaction to their not endorsing Harris. And now more drop away with each Republican-friendly move they make. If only there was a way to send them directly to DU....

[fargone]

31. That's when I canceled , but it took 6 months to actually stop since I had paid for a year

[Deminpenn]

13. The cuts really make no sense

Financial losses at the WaPo can be easily used to offset profits in Bezos' companies.

Bezos was always greedy, but now he become more malevolent.since he ditched his first wife and buffed up his body. It makes me wonder if he used steroids or PEDs to remake his body and is a victim of "steroid rage".

[Lonestarblue]

17. As someone who worked in corporate management for years, you cannot cut your way to profitability.

Weeding out inefficiencies is often merited, but cutting the lifeblood of an organization (reporters in this case) will only lead to more cuts. At some point a business leaders needs to create a product or service that people are willing to pay for. While the Post still has quite a few subscribers, they are most likely not enough to make it profitable. I think Bezos will eventually try to sell it to someone like the billionaire ultra right-wing Ellisons or just shut it down.

[Callie1979]

20. I worked for a company like that; cutting support staff produced worse cust svc

I was a field tech; drove around fixing equipment. One of the biggest sales points for our equipment was "We provide same day or next day service with company employees".
THEN the top folks started cutting field techs (must "save money&quot ; response times slowed. Larger customers left for competitors, so they cut MORE. And lost MORE customers. The stupid thing is, in my area we had 3 guys. In that area we had over 3000 machines from desktop sized to 300k machines. We had FOUR customers who generated enough revenue to pay ALL THREE of our salaries. So the rest was gravy. But still not enough
I was actually lucky when it was my turn. YEARS earlier I knew at some point I'd be rug-pulled so I started buying rental homes & finding other sources of income. So when my day came I decided, at 53, "I'm done. I'm now retired". Not sure where I'd be if I hadn't prepared

[Callie1979]

18. I dropped it when he BOUGHT it. And I've NEVER used Amazon. How many DUeers have stopped?

You CAN live without Amazon.

[AverageOldGuy]

21. About the Post

I retired from the Army 30 years ago with almost 30 years of service. Had three tours in/around the Pentagon; lived in Northern Virginia each time. The Post was our hometown paper, the Red****s or NFL team. Now, after many adventures, we are back in NOVA, in our 80's, living in a small apartment.

We still subscribe to the hard-copy Sunday post. It is a small shadow of its former self. Yes, I understand that print journalism is dying and that's a historic, national tragedy. Still . . . the Sunday Post has very little advertising and most of that is replace your old tub or shower . . . . we can read the entire Sunday edition in 10-15 minutes.

[MichMan]

23. Not enough people are willing to pay for internet content when the mindset is that it should all be "free"

People will try and bypass a paywall or just move on and find the content somewhere else. I do the same with the local Detroit newspapers. I have thought about paying for the Detroit News or Free Press, but they require you to sign up for auto renew, so no thanks.

[edhopper]

25. Do people realize that Besos doesn't care

and losing $100 million on the Wash Post to appease Trump has earned him Government contracts worth billions.

[Keepthesoulalive]

28. Bezos doesn't have to care

I do. It is a moral decision.

[edhopper]

29. I wasn't directed this

at those who cancelled, we did that as well. I was addressing those who said it will hit him in the pocketbook and have some impact.

[Keepthesoulalive]

30. This is about ego

He could pay far more in taxes than he does but he’s special and only the unworthy should pay for the things that keep this country functioning. All of the tech bros at his inauguration felt special because they could get government contracts and pay nothing in taxes.

[jrthin]

27. Is THAT all? Not enough. nt

[NEOBuckeye]

32. I cancelled my WaPo subscription after he blocked their endorsement of Kamala

Jeff can go fuck himself. I'm still weaning myself from Amazon, but he will be seeing as little of my money as possible from here on out. Fuck all of these greedy geeky fascists.

[AllaN01Bear]

33. comcast priced me out of the market years ago.::(

[Aussie105]

34. Once you decide your paper will just echo and follow the party line . . .

you don't need no reporters!

I mean, how many reporters does Pravda have?

Most printed papers around the world are on a death march though.
Putting them online helps, but not much.

Local paper here at AU $5 only gets bought once a week, for the TV programming guide the wife wants.

I have a quick look through the actual paper and sneer at the banal articles and the wordsmithing any teenager would be ashamed of.

[travelingthrulife]

38. I wish they would approach it like cable tv and offer a couple dozen or so news options

under a single subscription. I don't want dozens of individual subscriptions and all the pass-wording hassle that comes with it. I don't want the daily newsletter or whatever you offer. I just want to read the news.

[mahina]

35. Yo

I among them
subscribed forever
had friends who worked there
Next motto: democracy thrives in the light.

[travelingthrulife]

37. 'How to kill democracy' by Jeff Bezos.