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More than 250,000 Washington Post readers have canceled their subscriptions since the newspaper announced last week that it would not participate in the presidential race, leading to a “significant spike” in cancellations, The Washington Post reported late Tuesday.
The endorsement decision, first announced by Washington Post publisher Will Lewis on Friday, resulted in the newspaper losing nearly 10% of its digital subscribers by Tuesday evening, the newspaper reported, citing documents and two people familiar with the numbers. The newspaper said the number did not take into account any new subscribers the newspaper may have added since Friday or any subscribers who have resubscribed since then.
NPR first reported this number. A newspaper spokesman did not comment on the report.
In the wake of Lewis’ announcement that the newspaper would break with decades-old tradition and not endorse it in the race — less than two weeks before Election Day — readers immediately began to rebel against the move, with prominent figures and former staffers taking to the streets. They posted on social media that they had canceled their subscriptions. The Post reported that it began seeing an increase in cancellations within hours of the announcement.
Readers and former employees of The Washington Post, including former executive editor Marty Baron, have called the decision “cowardly” and “cowardly,” viewing the move as an attempt by billionaire newspaper owner Jeff Bezos as an attempt to preemptively bend the knee to the government. A potential second Trump administration. A person familiar with the matter told CNN that Harris’ endorsement was drafted by members of the newspaper’s editorial board before Bezos rescinded it.
The Los Angeles Times, which also penned an endorsement of Harris’ White House bid before the billionaire owner vetoed it, announced last week that it would not publish its endorsement.
“I don’t think there’s a reasonable explanation for withdrawing support other than fear of retaliation from the Trump administration,” Bill Gruskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School, told CNN. “If the Washington Post or the Times just published their endorsement, no matter how gossipy or elite they were, it would probably fly under the radar.”
At a campaign rally on Wednesday in North Carolina, former President Donald Trump seized on the banned endorsements, claiming they were proof that the posts were quietly supporting him on Harris.
“The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, all these newspapers. They don’t endorse anyone,” Trump said. “Do you know what they’re really saying? Because they support Democrats only. They say this Democrat is no good. They are not good. “They think I’m doing a great job.”
Earlier this week, as The Washington Post hemorrhaged subscribers — and three members of the editorial board resigned — Bezos sought to temper the response, publishing a rare op-ed in which he acknowledged that the timing of his decision had led to speculation that he was trying to appease Trump.
“I wish we had made the change sooner than we did, in a moment far removed from the election and the emotions surrounding it,” Bezos wrote. “This was not adequate planning, nor was it a deliberate strategy.”
Bezos also acknowledged the “appearance of conflict” with the decision, acknowledging that his ownership of e-commerce giant Amazon and space exploration company Blue Origin, which has multi-billion-dollar federal contracts, was a “complex for the Washington Post.”
His recent discussions with Trump have also drawn interest. After the former president was shot in the ear this summer in an assassination attempt, Bezos called the former president “to say how impressed he was that the candidate raised his fist after being shot,” the newspaper reported.
On Friday, hours after Lewis announced his decision not to endorse the presidential race, Trump met with Blue Origin executives in Texas, adding fuel to the already smoldering fires of backlash. In his op-ed, Bezos insisted that he had no prior knowledge of the meeting.
“I would also like to make clear that there is no quid pro quo of any kind here. Neither the campaign nor the candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was entirely manufactured in-house.”
Instead, Bezos framed his decision to end presidential endorsements as one designed to restore readers’ trust.
“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,” he wrote. “Perception of lack of independence. Terminating it is a principled decision, and it is the right decision.”
While Bezos denied that his business interests played a role in the decision, publishing the presidential endorsement could have an impact on the newspaper’s bottom line, Gruskin said.
Losing 250,000 subscribers may not be equal [be] “Pocket change for Jeff Bezos,” he said. But “that’s a significant portion of the revenue and readership going to The Washington Post — certainly for now, and probably for many years.”
“This obviously has implications for print publications, especially The Washington Post, whose business model was already on thin ice,” Gruskin added. “This is the worst case of bullying by a media mogul I have seen since the days of Tronc.”
CNN’s Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.