Washington Post loses thousands of readers after major election policy shift

Last fall‚ the Washington Post made a game-changing move that shook its reader-base: they wont endorse any presidential candidates anymore. About 200k digital subscribers (roughly 8-percent of total 2.5m readers) cancelled their subscriptions in response

Jeff Bezos‚ who owns the paper and founded Amazon.com‚ stepped up to explain the choice. “Most people think media is biased‚“ he wrote in his op-ed piece — suggesting that ending endorsements could help fix medias credibility problem. He also made it clear: there wasnt any back-room deals involved with the decision

The papers announcement blocked what couldʼve been an endorsement for Vice-President Kamala Harris‚ as reported by NPR. The timing raised eye-brows because it happened on the same day Donald Trump met with Blue Origins CEO; however Bezos strongly denied any connection

Twenty well-known columnists hit back with their own write-up calling it a “terrible mistake“. Several staff-members even quit their jobs in protest. The Washington Posts publisher William Lewis stayed firm on the decision saying: “We are going back to our roots“

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election; what they actually do is create a perception of bias