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.

MBFC
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  • @[email protected]
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    756 months ago

    So not only has he quite literally decimated their readerbase but he’s also made every other newspaper run the story that they were going to endorse Harris anyway, instead of likely just limiting that information to the handful of Washington Post subscribers that cared enough to check. Great quash, Jeff, you really shut that one down.

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    I don’t imagine they thought that this would literally decimate their subscriber base.*

    • ~yes I made the same joke twice in two different communities. It’s not often you get to use the literal definition of decimate.~
    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      Unless the former subscribers were executed, that’s not the literal definition of decimate.

      • @[email protected]
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        16 months ago

        Historically (dating back to the 1600s) it could also be used for tithing or taxing one tenth of an amount too. Are you executing their money?

  • Media Bias Fact CheckerB
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    76 months ago
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  • @[email protected]
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    996 months ago

    To him, I’m sure it’s an acceptable loss.

    If Amazon Prime and AWS cancellations hit a significant level over this, that would have more of an impact.

    • @[email protected]
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      336 months ago

      Yup, he’ll lose more revenue than those 10% WaPo subscribers under Harris. If Harris raises Amazon’s taxes half a percent, this loss would become rounding error. Bezos wants Trump to win and wants to be Trump’s friend for his own financial gain.

      • @[email protected]
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        56 months ago

        What drives someone with as much as Bezos to still want the high score to keep going up? This motherfucker should have to spend a month in a tent city.

        • @[email protected]
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          46 months ago

          You don’t become a billionaire by thinking of others. It’s such a mind-boggling amount of hoarded wealth that most of us can’t even properly comprehend it…

  • @[email protected]
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    406 months ago

    Besos wipes his ass with those 250K subscribers. What he needs is to be stripped of his wealth.

    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      Sure he needs to be taxed into dust. But he doesn’t own the WaPo because it’s making him rich. He runs it because it’s a propaganda machine for him.

      He lost 10% of his subscribers, almost immediately, when he tried to use it that way openly. Which says:

      • it’s now a 10% less effective propaganda machine (and that number will keep growing)
      • it’s possible that it was never effective in the first place

      Given those two propositions, he might just unload it, which would be nice for the rest of us.

  • @[email protected]
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    376 months ago

    It’s good to see the system working like it should for the free press for once; they made a terrible decision and they’re paying for it. Now, if we can just collectively turn our backs on all the disreputable sources and start promoting the reputable ones, we might fix a broken system.

    • @[email protected]
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      36 months ago

      A little like it should. Maybe it culminates in at least a temporary drop to the tune of 15-20%. Maybe $50 million dollars of lost revenue a year, assuming people stay pissed (and they frequently get over it, or some MAGA people decide to reward the outlets refusal to get behind Harris). Let’s get super pessimistic and assume it totally tanks, and the first number I could find was about $600 million in annual revenue, so Bezos is out a bit over half a billion if this completely blows.

      Just one of Trump’s tantrums cost Bezos $10 Billion in revenue for Amazon. Burning the paper to the ground would be worth it to spare Bezos Trump’s wrath moving forward.

  • @[email protected]
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    136 months ago

    So not only do they loose the direct revenue from the subscribers, but because the readership has fallen significantly & publicly, advertisement revenue is going to fall, too, as the advertisers know the paper isn’t reaching as many readers.

  • @[email protected]
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    126 months ago

    bleed some more, bozo, and wapo will drop from 3rd to 4th (print circulation probably already has) largest, behind usa today

  • enkers
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Skua
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      286 months ago

      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