Cal Thomas: When readers leave

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

For decades, The Washington Post shaped how Americans understood politics and power. Today, its audience is shrinking, and so is its influence.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on what happened—and why it matters beyond one storied newsroom.

CAL THOMAS: Unless you work—or once worked—in journalism, you may not realize how much trouble The Washington Post is in.

Publisher Will Lewis recently resigned after owner Jeff Bezos announced a major restructuring of the paper. The entire sports section was shut down. Roughly a third of the staff was laid off, including hundreds of newsroom journalists.

This is not an isolated event. It reflects a broader collapse across the newspaper industry. Younger audiences increasingly get their news online—and advertisers have followed them out the door.

The Post did not help itself when it declined to endorse Kamala Harris for president, prompting an estimated quarter-million subscribers to cancel. That reaction says something about audience expectations—and about how narrow the paper’s appeal had become.

Before anything else, journalism is a business. Consumers will not buy a product they do not want. One problem Bezos appeared to recognize is the Post’s long-standing ideological tilt—not just on its opinion pages, but in what it covers, how it covers it, and sometimes, what it ignores. Even the language of its obituaries often reflects a worldview that treats liberals generously and conservatives more skeptically.

The answer is not for the Post to become more partisan, but more representative of the country it claims to cover.

For decades, the Post lived off its Watergate reputation. But that was fifty years ago. Two generations have grown up since then. The journalists who made the paper famous inspired many young people to enter the profession—but that legacy alone cannot sustain an institution indefinitely.

The Post, like much of the media, has ignored or stereotyped a large portion of the country. That vacuum helped give rise to alternative outlets that pursued readers the Post no longer seemed interested in serving. Some of those outlets struggle financially too—but they retain loyal audiences precisely because they know who they are writing for.

The result is a crisis of trust. 

A recent Gallup poll found that barely three in ten Americans have even a fair amount of confidence in the media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. More Americans now say they have no trust at all in the media, than say they trust it.

This is the only business I know of that appears indifferent to what its customers think. A restaurant that insists on serving food diners do not want will soon be empty.

Growing up near Washington, D.C., newspapers were part of daily life in my home. Their journalism helped draw me into this profession. But today, where would a young person who wants to become a journalist apply?

Probably not at a place where the front door is opening mainly for people on the way out.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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