Then you will be responsible for the next round of cuts.
That's grandiose. Besides, guilt-tripping is pointless.
Every subscriber has to make a decision for himself or herself. I merely described my own considerations. In 2024, when the Post lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers due to the last-minute decision not to make a presidential endorsement, every subscriber at the time had to consider whether it was worth continuing with the subscription. My own decision was to keep the subscription. Newspaper opinion pages don't matter to me, and editorial endorsements or the lack of endorsements has never had an influence on how I vote.
The cost-benefit analysis may be different this time. I valued the technology reporting that the Post did, especially regarding cybersecurity, which I happen to know a few things about. That's going to be much diminished. It may not be worth the $8.41 per month to continue. Sounds miniscule, but that's a shade over $100 per year. In a personal context, I may find better uses for that money. Jeff Bezos isn't a charity, and neither am I. In a larger context, I doubt that my subscription is going to be essential to the Post's survival.
The model of sustaining a news organization (especially print) hoping for subsidies by a civic-minded rich guy willing to tolerate small profit margins always seemed shaky to me. For one reason, the new generation of rich guys is mostly selfish, self-absorbed, and interested in civic projects only to the extent that they can get a tax deduction from it. For another, it's become clear that this new generation will cozy up to any political entity that appears to have the power or inclination to take their tax breaks away from them. Non-profit organizations seem to have better success through soliciting donations from civic-minded readers. Those organizations' lack of brand heritage is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The disadvantage is that they have to create a track record from scratch. The advantage is that they're not nearly as stuck in dogma as the old print organizations. Moreover, they're entirely online. They've never had to deal with the industrial process of printing, which really is akin to manufacturing.
Nothing here argues for weakening ethical standards. The Post has seemed mostly OK on that point up to now. We will see if that continues.
What newspapers are doing now with paywalls simply won't scale. Few people will want to manage a multitude of online subscriptions. Publications without national reach will struggle. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times have all succeeded in achieving national and even international reach. The Post had national aspirations; with the staffing cuts, it will have to be content to be a regional organization, albeit one that contains the national capital. But otherwise, there will be little to differentiate it from, say, the Kansas City Star. Nothing wrong with the Star, but it's never been an organization with national aspirations and never will be. The Post is going to be functioning at that level. That also means its subscription market will be far smaller than it has been.
The answer is because nothing is as it was 50 years ago.
Except for radio programming concepts. As for politics, things are becoming as they were
150 years ago. We are retrogressing quickly to a state of partisan-fueled ignorance along with unrestrained grifting and quackery.
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