alt Hacker NewsThe Atlantic, WSJ, The Economist, Politico all come to mind as profitable.
I don’t think it’s anomalous to have a major national newspaper that’s profitable. And WaPo should have been absolutely primed for Trump II given its long time DC focus. They historically had the best political coverage of DC.
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> They historically had the best political coverage of DC
And then Bezos replaced veteran leaders with ideological leaders from the Murdoch empire. Then Bezos put his thumb on the scale and vetoed the paper's presidential endorsement in 2024, and 250,000 subscribers cancelled. Then Bezos dictated that the paper's opinion section will censor any idea that does not support conservative/libertarian/free-market ideology and 75,000 more subscribers cancelled.
Maybe the ideological reorientation along with savage cuts to the newsroom has something to do the loss of subscribers and the dire financial straits used to justify even more cuts to the newsroom?
There is a market for quality, fact-checked journalism that you can't get on podcasts and social media. But when you force that journalism through a right-wing ideological filter, you destroy the intrinsic value of independent journalism.
Of those only the journal is a newspaper. The Atlantic is a magazine and economist/politico are focused on a single news sector
The network effects. The strong get stronger and grow larger, creating a fly wheel. On X.com there are citizen journalists publishing and reposting tons of hyper local news, and I assume it also hits FB but I don’t use that. We don’t need as many proper media companies as we did decades ago. The Tier 3 media outlets died long ago, now WaPo tried to be tier 1 but it failed, and will die as a has-been slowly. Probably should switch to Washington DC gossip and scoops as its forte.
Agree, if Bezos hadn’t alienated the readership, they’d probably be doing well.
I used to look up to him before he became an obsequious traitor.