Infamous NeverTrumper Jennifer Rubin has parted ways with the Washington Post, an outlet that has hemorrhaged readers since Joe Biden took office four years ago.
Rubin, who spent 14 years writing for the opinion section at WaPo, resigned from the publication, CNN reported on Monday, claiming that it and other mainstream media outlets have “failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.”
“I fear that things are going from bad to worse at the Post,” she added.
Specifically, Rubin took issue with WaPo owner Jeff Bezos nixing an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in October. She also noted that another Bezos business, Amazon, made a $1 million contribution to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Rubin will now join forces with former Obama official and Trump impeachment attorney Norm Eisen for a Substack entitled the Contrarian. Rubin will serve as editor in chief, Eisen as publisher.
With the tagline “Not owned by anybody,” the Contrarian promises to feature “pro-democracy” voices, especially those that once excoriated voters and officials who dared question the 2020 election or anyone who took an unauthorized pass through the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Substack will offer some free content beginning on Monday but will eventually charge subscribers $7 per month for full access.
“Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face,” Rubin told CNN, adding that far too many reporters have lately “bent the knee” to President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office again in a matter of days.
“The voices we’ll be featuring are diverse across parties and generations,” Eisen said in a statement, “connected by the shared belief that we need an unshackled media in order to meet this moment, as we face an existential threat to American democracy.”
‘Our industry is in the middle of a major transformation.’
Rubin won’t be the only one to leave the Post. The outlet is planning to lay off 100 people, approximately 4% of its workforce, though the newsroom will not be affected, the Wall Street Journal reported. This latest round of layoffs comes after the outlet cut 240 journalists in October 2023.
Staff reductions are hardly surprising considering the tremendous loss in readership in recent years. In January 2021, WaPo website traffic soared to a high-water mark of 22.5 million daily active users, according to Semafor. By the middle of 2024, that number had tanked to an average of just 2.5 or 3 million.
Notably, 250,000 WaPo readers canceled their subscriptions after learning about the snafu regarding the Harris endorsement, though a source told the WSJ that many of those subscribers have since returned.
Revenue at WaPo has also dwindled. The outlet lost $77 million in 2023 alone and another $100 million last year. Ad dollars also fell from $190 million in 2023 to just $174 million in 2024.
“Our industry is in the middle of a major transformation,” a spokeswoman told the WSJ. “The Post is committed to innovating, creating, and leading the way forward to reach all Americans with nonpartisan news and thought-provoking reported views.”
H/T: The Post Millennial
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