Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.
The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.
A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.
The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.
Sadly, that’s chump change for him. 250k sub’s at $120/yr comes out to $30M/yr. That’s ~ 0.015% of his net wealth. Better than nothing though.
I believe that the main reason for people as wealthy as him to own newspapers is not the money, it’s the influence. This does hurt that