"200,000 Subscribers Canceled"... What Happened to WP That Rejected Support for Harris?

[US Election 2024]
WP Owner Bezos Deletes Editorial Supporting Harris
Digital Subscribers, Editorial Board, Columnists Leave

The influential American daily newspaper The Washington Post (WP) has declared that it will break with long-standing tradition and not endorse any specific presidential candidate, but this has sparked a strong backlash, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and columnists leaving in succession.

According to the U.S. public radio NPR on the 28th (local time), more than 200,000 WP digital subscribers had canceled their subscriptions by noon that day. This accounts for about 8% of WP's 2.5 million paid subscribers, including print subscribers. Internally at WP, one-third of the editorial board members have resigned, and two columnists have also announced their resignations.

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

The reason WP is facing such fierce opposition both inside and outside the company is due to a statement made on the 25th by William Lewis, WP's CEO, in a letter to readers, declaring that "WP will not endorse any specific candidate in this presidential election" and that "this will be the case for any future presidential elections as well." Since its founding, WP has consistently expressed support for presidential candidates. Recently, the editorial board drafted an editorial endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, but it is reported that Jeff Bezos, the owner of WP and founder of Amazon, 'killed' (deleted) it.

David Hoffman, a Pulitzer Prize winner who recently announced his resignation from the WP editorial board, criticized, saying, "I can no longer sit on the editorial board and write editorials that succumb to silence," adding, "A terrible dictatorship is approaching, and we stand at a crossroads, but WP's silence on this is unacceptable." The American political media outlet The Hill reported that "This is the first time in 36 years that WP has not endorsed a specific candidate in a presidential election."

On the same day that WP's endorsement of Vice President Harris was halted, it was also reported that executives from Blue Origin, the space company led by Bezos, met with former President Donald Trump, which added fuel to the fire. According to the AP News, former President Trump met with Blue Origin's CEO and vice president of government affairs after finishing a campaign rally in Austin, Texas. However, the content of their conversation was not disclosed.

Marcus Brauchli, former WP executive editor, described the wave of WP subscription cancellations as "enormous," analyzing that "this shows that we live in a polarized era and how sensitively people react to this." However, he argued that "before this incident, Bezos had never interfered with WP's critical coverage of Trump, so there is no reason for him to now bow to Trump," and that canceling WP subscriptions as a simple form of protest might be a hasty action.