Washington Post Losses Don’t Sway Liberals Upset with Recent Layoffs
About three weeks ago, The Washington Post announced a wave of layoffs that stunned media observers, leaving the venerable institution looking like a shadow of its former self. At the time, speculation swirled that owner Jeff Bezos had grown weary of mounting losses and demanded swift action to stem the red ink. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports the paper has hemorrhaged $277 million over the last three years—a figure that eclipses the $250 million Bezos paid to acquire the Post from the Graham family in 2013.
From Savior to Scrutinized
When he first took the reins, Bezos was hailed by liberals for rescuing the paper from potential buyers like Chris Ruddy and Newsmax. For much of his tenure, he remained hands-off, delegating operations to seasoned journalism professionals. However, the product Bezos purchased was already struggling to navigate an era dominated by 24/7 cable news and digital disruption. Unlike The New York Times, which successfully pivoted to a massive digital subscription model, the Post never quite cracked the code on monetizing its most valuable assets.
The Breaking Point
This systemic failure, coupled with a mass exodus of liberal readers following Bezos’s 2024 decision to kill a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, created a “perfect storm” for the recent layoffs. The same liberals who praised Bezos when he saved the Post pilloried him after the layoffs, ignoring the large losses the paper was racking up.
While $277 million in losses is a drop in the bucket for a man Fortune recently valued at $266 billion, the current crisis serves as a stark reminder: even for the world’s wealthiest individuals, patience for a sinking ship eventually runs dry.
Don Irvine
Donald Irvine is the chairman of of Accuracy in Academia (AIA), a non-profit research group reporting on bias in education. Irvine follows his father’s legacy, Reed Irvine, to critically analyze the liberal media’s bias and brings over thirty years of media analysis experience. He has published countless blog posts and articles on media bias, in context of current events, and he has been interviewed by many news media outlets during his professional career. He currently hosts a livestream weekly show on AIA’s Facebook page which discusses current events.
Irvine graduated from the University of Maryland and rose up the ranks to become chairman of Accuracy in Media until his transition to AIA.
He resides in the suburbs around the nation’s capital and is a proud father and grandfather.
