As the Washington Post Has Been Shrinking a Competitor Rises

The Washington Post, over the past few years, has undergone significant remodeling. Mostly, it has not been for the better. Repeated layoffs were followed by management shakeups, sections being culled, and last year saw significant staff shrinkage, with buyouts dangled amid more promised cuts.

Now it faces a new challenge, and it is right on the front doorstep where its print editions used to be tossed. This week saw the emergence of The Washington Sun, a reformatted outlet that can be described as more than a direct competitor; the Sun appears to be taking over the publishing carapace that the struggling Washington Post has shrugged off.

Welcome to The Washington Sun. https://t.co/XpDhB9OsHY pic.twitter.com/FYnPF1dxva

— The Washington Sun (@washingtonsun) September 9, 2026

Harsh as the Post cuts had been, much of the severity was needed. All of the drama and drastic moves of the past few years were the result of the paper losing an estimated $100 million annually. Then, as the paper was enduring the challenges seen across the news spectrum, it curiously exacerbated things.

Just ahead of the 2024 general election, it was announced that the Washington Post was not going to issue a formal election endorsement. This created a furor both with the paper’s offices and with the readership. There was a staff revolt, with some even quitting over the decision, and this bled over to the readership.

Upon seeing the hysterics from the Washington Post staff, readers jumped ship as well. In the weeks following the decision, the paper lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers. That all of the histrionics were over a supposedly unbiased news outlet taking a neutral stand was lost on the emotional head cases.

The paper also went through upper management shifts, with new names brought in to helm the paper. Will Lewis was installed, coming from his long tenure running British outlets and the Wall Street Journal, but his connections to Rupert Murdoch only rankled the staff even more. He left in February, following another string of layoffs and upper level tensions.

During all of this upheaval, other moves were reformatting the vaunted institution in the nation’s capital. The paper deemphasized local news coverage. February saw them entirely dropping the sports section, and its noted books department. It severed the relationship with the Capital Weather Gang.

The remodeling seen last summer was possibly the most drastic, with many prominent Washington Post names departing. Jonathan Capehart, Glenn Kessler, Philip Bump, and Catherine Rampell were among those who took the buyouts. Former WaPo luminaries are now seen at The New York Times, The Atlantic, or MS NOW.

And also, at the upstart paper across town. Longtime WaPo standout Dana Milbank made the announcement yesterday that the Washington Sun was officially emerging. Milbank was among the escapees, who announced his departure from the Post in March and hinted at this new competitor being worked up at the time.

The Washington Sun is the result of Politico founder Robert Allbritton. This new news outlet is the reformulation of the digital site NOTUS (News of the United States.) NOTUS had been formed from the Allbritton Journalism Institute, intended to be something of a journalism laboratory to help form young media arrivals and to fill the news voids amid industry turnovers.

With the Washington Post being effectively torn down to the studs for renovation, Allbritton saw a chance. He decided to alter NOTUS and basically double the staff to takeover those aspects that the Post had dispatched. He also brought in a slew of that paper’s former people.

Joining Milbank are over two dozen other Post veterans. The Washington Sun intends on providing content on both national and local news. It will deliver sports coverage for what is essentially a 6-team region, when you include Baltimore franchises. They have hired the Capital Weather gang.

In what surely has to be regarded as intentional timing, the Washington Post at almost the same time has come out with its own announcements. The Will Lewis departure had been filled on an interim basis by former CFO Jeff D’Onofrio, and Wednesday he was formerly installed as the publisher.

It was also announced that the Post has been turning the corner financially. After years of burning Jeff Bezos cash like it was yard waste in a firepit, it is claimed that the paper could achieve break-even status by year’s end. This is said to be helped by a surge of subscriptions over the past calendar year.

Essentially the Washington Sun is positioned to become the WaPo-2.0. So what is brewing in D.C. is a battle between the revamped Washington Post, and the new arrival that has adopted the older format. It will be worthwhile to see which – if either – of these news sources prospers in this restructured environment.

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