The tower of the Washington Post, one of America's 3 or 4 most important newspapers (the other ones being the NY Times, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal). The paper that brought down a President in 1972 is in financial trouble.
(photo courtesy CBC.ca and Reuters)
As the internet and social media gain more and more influence over all information and news dissemination, Newspapers continue to decline in importance and revenues, and just today one of the two or three most influential newspapers in the US has announced that they are laying off one third of their workforce: The Washington Post is laying off 30% of their news staff.
This comes after previous rounds of 400 layoffs over the past three years.
You can read more about this in the CBC News article linked here.:
This comes a year or more after the Los Angeles Times laid off 110 staff -- 20% of its workforce -- because they have been losing revenues. The New York Times, the third big national newspaper, has added staff, but only because of its Games and Wirecutter, non-news divisions.
Here is a link to the NY Times' "Games" division page, where there are links to the Crossword, and other games like Dominos and a Spelling Bee game, that the paper publishes. As you can tell, the Games are NOT part of the News division.
NY Times' Wirecutter is a "product review website" which is also NOT News related. You can read about it here.:
As you can tell, these two NY Times sites have NOTHING to do with News.
Now, the NY Times' branching out to being a gaming platform as well as a product review website is smart business -- but it is NEWS? Nope. It's smart yes, but not news. And although the NY Times appears to actually be making money off their news division -- they made $805 million last year, with over 12 million subscribers, they have tuned into outliers.
The general shape of the newspaper industry is that it is in decline.
In the case of the Washington Post, even having 2 million subscribers isn't keeping the paper from having to lay off staff. Two million subscribers seems like a big number until you compare that to the numbers of subscribers and followers that popular podcasts like Joe Rogan have.
Even the NY Times' 12.8 million subscribers doesn't come close to Joe Rogan's 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 16.4 million YouTube channel subscribers. Tucker Carlson, the famed ex-Fox News talking head, has 5.16 million YouTube channel subscribers. Just one guy, with about half the reach of the NY Times, and Carlson's only been on YT for 3-4 years. Even some OnlyFans influencers have as many subscribers as the NY Times and WA Post.
It's a tough time for legacy media in the US, but even tougher for one of the most 'legacy' news media out there: Newspapers.
Three years ago, I posted an article about the 2000+ local newspapers across the US that shut down in 2022. I posted that article just after New Year's, 2023. You can read it here.:
According to an article in Fortune magazine, as well as some surveys, over 30% of newspapers in the US have shut down since 2005. In fact, 48,000 journalists lost their jobs since the early 2010's -- over two thirds of the journalists that had employment in the 2000's.
Newspapers in the US have been in trouble for a long time. The first big hit was when online classified ads -- introduced in the mid 2000's -- removed about 40% of most newspapers' revenues within a year or two, because the free, online ads killed off the newspaper classified ads. Then, as the internet became the go-to for print media, newspapers across the US started losing even more subscribers and revenues.
At the time, online news was free, for the most part. Even today, many news aggregators like MSN and Yahoo provide free news. There are online newspapers that have free news -- it's loaded with video ads and some pop-ups, but the news is still free. With many people wary of paying so much for monthly subscriptions, it's no wonder that they don't want to pay for an online newspaper anymore.
Add to that the biases seemingly inherent in some of today's "journalism", and the fact that a lot of Americans simply do not trust the news media enough to want to pay for news, it's part of a deadly spiral that is socking it to Newspapers, and other news media are also feeling the pinch. Cable TV news viewership is down -- it's aging out. It's the same with network TV news.
Even being funded by one of the world's richest men -- Jeff Bezos, in the case of the Washington Post -- can't save jobs at a nationally important newspaper, as that newspaper -- like all news media -- as competing with every podcast and 'news' social media website out there. The LA Times is owned by a billionaire. That didn't keep him from laying off 110 staff 2-3 years ago.
So what does this mean for the Washington Post? I think it will survive. But it will not be in the same position that it was in the early 1970's when its reporting brought down a President.
Newspapers are dying. In 20 years, there will only be a handful left, and they will probably be funded by other interests -- the same way that Radio Sports-talk networks are increasingly backed by Sports betting and gambling. Newspapers will have to develop wide, online strategies (like the NY Times has done) to survive the age of social media, TikTok 'news', podcasts, and the internet.
We are one quarter into the 21st Century, and this is definitely the 'Digital Age'. The internet not only has altered the music industry, film industry, and Radio, but it has altered TV, and the News industry.
Everything is now just another form of internet content.
And AI, of course, is going to push that trend even further.
Whether those of us who were born in the previous Century like it or not, it is fact. It's just the way it is.
IN OTHER LIFE...
In other life, the weather here has taken a turn for the better. It is no longer below freezing outside at night, which means the unheated rooms in my house are no longer 48-49 degrees F. Yes, some rooms are unheated, because heat costs money. My internet is flakey -- the phone company says it's the modem/router going south. It's only 2-3 years old, but I guess they don't last as long as they used to. I'm still waiting on a new one to show up, then I have to go through the process of getting it online and hoping it is going to fix the internet cut-outs.
Right now I just take a lot of breaks. It seems to keep the router from re-setting all the time.
My cat Bear is getting more used to me. She no longer hides if there is a strange noise in the room (like me opening a plastic trash bag to clean her litter box -- she doesn't like some noises).
The SW and MW DX conditions have improved somewhat. I hope it holds for another year, before it all dives into a Solar minimum. This morning I heard 11 Meter sideband stations from all over the Eastern US, as well as Arizona and California. A few days ago I heard Brazilians on 27425 USB and 27435 USB, which was cool. At night the conditions on the lower bands aren't all that great, though. The 40M ham band is often very spare of signals, and it's the same way with the 80M ham band.
Some of it may be ionospheric conditions -- and some of it might be that hams just don't get on the air so much anymore. It's hard to tell.
Until next time, my friends,
Peace.
C.C. February 4th, 2026.
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