More than 200,000 people have canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post — about 8% of its base — after Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner and founder of Amazon, barred the editorial board from running a presidential endorsement, according to a report.
NPR, citing anonymous sources, cited the figure in a report and said the number of cancelations “continued to grow” on Monday afternoon. The controversy threatens to put a major dent in the Washington Post’s estimated 2.5 million subscribers.
Reached by Variety, a Washington Post rep declined to comment on the report, noting that as a private company it doesn’t share subscriber numbers.
On Friday, Washington Post CEO and publisher William Lewis wrote in an article on the paper’s website, “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” The Post has endorsed a candidate in every presidential election since 1976, with the exception of 1988. Lewis, who joined the post in November 2023, was formerly CEO of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
As first reported by NPR, Bezos — who bought the Washington Post in 2013 — had recently decided that the newspaper would not endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the 2024 election. The paper’s editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Harris. Some observers (and, evidently, thousands of subscribers) interpreted the move as an attempt by Bezos to avoid getting targeted for attacks by Trump. The New York Times reported that executives from Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company met with Trump on Friday, and noted that Blue Origin has a $3.4 billion contract with the NASA to build a lunar lander.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Variety