The Washington Post’s evisceration at the hands of its billionaire owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, didn’t have to happen.
Following months of speculation, the Post cut at least 300 of its 800 journalists on Feb. 4, 2026, drastically reducing its international, local and sports coverage and eliminating its photo department and stand-alone book review section.
The downsizing followed several decisions by Bezos that drove away hundreds of thousands of subscribers, from killing the Post’s endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election to announcing that the editorial pages would henceforth be dedicated to “personal liberties and free markets”.
But though those moves inflicted considerable damage, the paper had been floundering ever since Donald Trump’s first presidential term, when Bezos proudly added the slogan ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ to its nameplate and the paper achieved both growth and profitability.
New York Times’ successful pivot
While its principal rival, The New York Times, successfully pivoted by rolling out ancillary products such as games, a cooking app and a consumer guide, the Post lost momentum – and was then pushed off a cliff as Bezos, in my view, started placing a higher value on peace with Trump than on making sure that democracy didn’t die in darkness.
I’m a journalism professor and the author of three books about the future of news. I tracked Bezos’ stewardship of the Post during better times in my 2018 book, “The Return of the Moguls: How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century.” And I’ve been watching in horror over the past several years as he’s dismantled much of what he built.
The Times, as the nation’s leading newspaper, is unique, and the extent to which other publishers can learn from its example is limited.
But if Bezos ever decides he wants to take journalism seriously again, then he might take a look at a handful of large regional papers that have charted a route to sustainability against the strong headwinds that continue to buffet the news business.
Five good examples
Perhaps the most important difference between these papers and the Post – and the hundreds of other shrinking media outlets owned by corporate chains and hedge funds – is that they are rooted in the communities they cover. Whether owned by wealthy people or run by nonprofits, they place service to their city and region above extracting the last smidgen of revenue they can squeeze out.
Although I could add a few to this list, I am mentioning five large regional newspapers as examples of how it’s possible to succeed despite the long-term decline in the economics of journalism.
These papers have an array of ownership models.
- The Boston Globe and The Minnesota Star Tribune, both for-profits, were bought in recent years by the billionaire owners of sports teams.
- The Seattle Times, another for-profit, has belonged to the same family since 1896.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer was acquired by a billionaire and donated to a nonprofit foundation in 2016, making it a leading example of a hybrid for-profit and nonprofit model.
- The Salt Lake Tribune, which a billionaire bought from the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, was converted to a pure nonprofit – the first such paper to undergo such a transition.
Also known as major metropolitan dailies, these papers are all smaller than they were during the heyday of the 1970s and ’80s.
Although the for-profit papers are privately owned and do not publish financial results, I’ve learned through years of reporting that the generous profit margins that once characterised newspapers have all but disappeared. Still, these papers have maintained substantial staffs and are their regions’ leading, though not sole, news providers.
Common themes
It’s hard to identify specific reasons why these papers have succeeded, but a few themes emerge.
The Boston Globe and The Minnesota Star Tribune, for instance, have both expanded into other geographic areas. The Globe has moved into Rhode Island and New Hampshire – with more to come in 2026.
Similarly, the Strib, as The Minnesota Star Tribune is known, now covers news across Minnesota, well beyond its base in the Twin Cities.
The Globe has also balanced experimentation with attention to the basics.
Not long after John and Linda Henry bought the Globe in 2013, they started a separate digital publication called Crux, which covered the Catholic Church. It failed to attract advertisers, and the Globe spun it off; Crux continues under different ownership.
Meanwhile, another Globe-owned startup, Stat, which covers health and medicine, grew into a successful venture during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As for the basics, the Globe charges a premium for its journalism – as much as $36 a month for a digital-only subscription. And though paid digital circulation has stalled over the past year at about 260,000, that’s considerably more than most papers in its weight class.
Unlimited gift links
The Star Tribune, owned by sports mogul Glen Taylor, unveiled a new, paywall-free breaking-news blog in the midst of the sometimes deadly immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The paper also offers unlimited gift links, so that paid subscribers can share stories with others, as well as a family subscription plan.
And it has a nonprofit fund to which donors can make tax-deductible contributions to support the paper’s journalism.
By the way, the idea of setting up a separate nonprofit arm was pioneered by The Seattle Times, although it has become increasingly common.
The Seattle Times recently handed off management of the paper to Ryan Blethen, who represents the fifth generation of his family to serve as publisher.
In contrast to formerly family-owned papers such as the Courier Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, and The Des Moines Register, whose large families forced their sale two generations ago, The Seattle Times has actually become more independent: In 2024, the Times bought out Chatham Asset Management, a private equity firm that had controlled 49.5% of the paper.
Chatham also owns the McClatchy chain of newspapers, which includes well-known dailies such as the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and The Sacramento Bee.
Nonprofit ownership
In addition to the for-profit model, two other ownership structures have shown promise.
In 2016, H.F. ‘Gerry’ Lenfest donated The Philadelphia Inquirer, which he and a partner had bought just two years earlier, to a nonprofit that was renamed the Lenfest Institute following his death in 2018.
The Inquirer itself is a for-profit public benefit corporation, a designation that eases the standard corporate requirement that it maximize earnings, while the nonprofit helps support journalism at the Inquirer and other news organisations.
The paper has thrived under the new arrangement, with the publisher, Elizabeth Hughes, writing recently that the model could be used to revive the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on the opposite end of Pennsylvania.
The Post-Gazette’s owners, citing mounting losses, have announced that the paper will shut down in May.
And though The Salt Lake Tribune is the first – and, still, the only – metro daily to embrace a pure nonprofit model, it stands as an intriguing idea that could be emulated elsewhere.
Billionaire owner Paul Huntsman converted the paper to a nonprofit in 2019 after buying it from Alden three years earlier. Executive editor Lauren Gustus said recently that the Tribune is expanding both the size of its news staff and its coverage area, and it’s dropping its paywall in favor of voluntary payments. That’s similar to how nonprofit public radio and television stations support themselves.
A poster boy for decline
The past two decades have not been kind to the newspaper business. More than 3,500 U.S. papers have closed in that period, according to the most recent State of Local News report from Northwestern University’s Medill School.
By destroying The Washington Post, the very institution he had previously done so much to build up, Jeff Bezos has transformed himself into the poster boy for that decline.
Yet here and there, in communities across the country, newspapers are reinventing themselves.
There are no easy fixes. But perseverance, innovation and a relentless focus on serving the public are the keys to success, regardless of ownership structure or geography. Bezos could learn from these models.
Dan Kennedy, Professor of Journalism, Northeastern University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
