The Washington Post‘s CEO and publisher Will Lewis is seemingly making good on his promise of turning the newspaper into an AI slop fest.
Following a series of scandals and losing 250,000 subscribers in the wake of billionaire owner Jeff Bezos currying favor with president-elect Donald Trump, the newspaper has a new mission statement: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” which sparked widespread mockery across the web.
“I’d like to know how much some PR or ad firm got paid to come up with so pathetic a ‘mission statement,'” tweeted Defending Democracy Together director Bill Kristol.
According to a slide deck obtained by the New York Times, the Post is hoping to “provide a forum for viewpoints, expert perspectives and conversation,” in an effort to expand its readership.
The slide also described the newspaper’s new vision as an “AI-fueled platform for news” that delivers “ideas and insights for all Americans where, how and when they want it.”
The latest change sets a worrying tone for the paper, hinting at a transformation into a toothless content-churning machine as execs drool over AI hype — a disastrous turn we’ve already seen numerous times in the journalism industry.
Meanwhile, the newspaper is still reeling from internal turmoil following a series of high-profile departures. More than 400 employees sent a letter to Bezos on Tuesday, requesting to discuss the “integrity of this institution” that “prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave.”
Bezos, on the other hand, has defended his disastrous leadership by arguing that the WaPo should appeal to “more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland,” as the NYT reports.
But whether injecting even more AI slop into the news operation will end up being good for business remains to be seen, especially because the paper is already showing signs of decline.
In addition to the cancellations, according to internal data obtained by Semafor earlier this week, the newspaper’s traffic has fallen off a cliff. Its daily traffic last year reached only a quarter of its all-time high in 2021, dropping from around 22.5 million daily active users in January 2021 to less than 3 million in mid-2024.
In short, the Post looks dramatically different than it did a year ago, and its lackluster new slogan perfectly encapsulates its accelerating slide into irrelevancy.
It also signals Bezos’ fundamental misunderstanding of what journalism actually is. In an editorial following his decision to give up on endorsing presidential candidates, Bezos argued that doing so would lend the outlet more credibility, not less.
But given the ensuing chaos and staff revolt, Bezos appears to have miscalculated.
The business also lost around $100 million last year, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, with increasingly disconnected leaders unable to convince staff that they had a clear editorial vision going forward. It’s doubtful that a pivot to AI will fix that.
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