The Washington Post reported a loss of $77 million last year, Publisher and Chief Executive Will Lewis said on Wednesday.
“Let me be frank with you, we are in a bind and have been for a long time,” Lewis told staff gathered at the newspaper's headquarters.
Lewis, who joined the company in January, revealed that the peak viewership the Post enjoyed in 2020 has since fallen by 50%. He then announced several plans to help reinvigorate the business, including telling staff it would be more aggressive in adopting artificial intelligence.
“I understand there's a lot of anxiety about AI becoming ubiquitous,” says Vineet Khosla, chief technology officer at The Washington Post, “but I want to get past that anxiety. The way we work is this mindset of AI being everywhere. There's AI in the newsroom, there's AI for consumers, there's AI for business. Start thinking about AI as your co-pilot.”
Plans are already underway to have an AI voice read certain newsletters to readers, but the initiative will be expanded to more parts of the newsroom, such as article summaries that are generated by AI and edited by the media's journalists.
The company also plans to introduce new tiered subscription models with additional features such as “Post Pro” and “Post Plus” for professional and avid readers respectively, as well as a pay-per-story model for readers who are only interested in a single article.
“We believe we've been too one-size-fits-all for too long, and we're excited to develop new consumer and professional products that better serve the needs of our multifaceted customer base,” said Chief Growth Officer Carl Wells.
“I truly hope that in the future we look back on this day and realize that this was actually a very important day in the history of our company,” Lewis said.
