The slide deck compares the 200 million target with efforts to land a man on the moon — and it is an ambitious goal: The Post currently has fewer than three million digital subscribers; The Times, an industry leader, has roughly 11 million total subscribers.
Most publications in The Washington Post’s peer group fall well short of reaching 200 million people, according to data from the analytics firm Comscore. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Axios and Politico all generated fewer than 100 million monthly total viewers for the first half of 2024, paying and non-paying, though they saw an audience spike around the presidential election.
The Post’s new target specifically mentions “users,” not “subscribers,” suggesting that the company may pursue different ways of getting payments from readers. Internal data circulated by The Post shows that the newspaper reaches many millions of consumers on platforms such as Apple News, social media and podcasts. Those audiences tend to be younger, but they’re also much harder to make money from, since the bulk of advertising dollars and subscriber fees go to other platforms.
This is not the first time in recent years that The Post has set out to expand its audience. Shortly after Mr. Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013, he told the Post staff to take advantage of “the gifts of the internet,” such as global reach, to grow its readership. Thereafter, The Post debuted a section called “Morning Mix,” featuring clickable stories from around the world that proved popular with readers.
The slide deck that Ms. Watford presented describes artificial intelligence as a key enabler of The Post’s success, the people said. It describes The Post as “an A.I.-fueled platform for news” that delivers “vital news, ideas and insights for all Americans where, how and when they want it.” It also lays out three pillars of The Post’s overall plan: “great journalism,” “happy customers” and “make money.” The Post lost roughly $77 million in 2023.
But many aspects of The Post’s new mission have nothing to do with emerging technology. The slide deck includes a list of seven principles first articulated by Eugene Meyer, an influential Post owner, in 1935. Among them: “the newspaper shall tell all the truth” and “the newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”
