Former president Donald Trump often said he was "the best thing to ever happen" to the Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets.
He was right.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Jeff Bezos-owned publication has lost 500,000 subscribers since Trump left office in January 2021, which amounts to a decline of roughly 20 percent. The Post is on track to lose money in 2022 after years of profitability. The New York Times reported in August that the Post‘s business has "stalled" since President Joe Biden was sworn in, and layoffs are being discussed amid management's frustration with "numerous low performers in the newsroom."
Trump called it as early as December 2017, when he predicted that "newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I'm not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes." The Post is hardly the only media outlet suffering in the post-Trump era. BuzzFeed, Gannett, and CNN announced significant layoffs this month in an effort to cut costs.
The bottom line: Media outlets (and the anti-Trump grifters at the Lincoln Project) stand to financially benefit if Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Assess their coverage of the GOP primary with this in mind.
Subscription cost (at least locally) is some long-term deal that they want you to sign up to....$40 for the first year, and going to $120 a year after that point. Wouldn’t shock me if by 2024, they get up to the $160 a year level.
Now, hold on. Everyone in this great US of A has had to tighten belts as the cost of living spirals. I saw my year-to-year cost of living go up 25 percent. Which means I have had to re-evaluate my spending, in particular calculating the return on investment of each purchase.
Bottom line: I currently have zero subscriptions to ANY dead-tree publication. Right, left, off-the-wall, or Communist. I keep up by using on-line resources, of which there are plenty. The news business doesn't want to hear this, especially as the advertising business model is sagging.
Plus, not having the dead trees delivered to my door-step reduces the number of trips to the recycling station, saving the gas expense. At north of $5/gallon, that's a significant expense. And I can't buy an electric plugin car; my apartment lease forbids it.
I hear people say "Watch when prices go down." That hasn't been the norm over the past century. I still remember 0.29/gallon gas. I still remember 0.50 paperback books. I still remember "penny candy." My first car was $600, and that wasn't all that long ago.
I call "pipe dream."