Washington Post to Merge Metro Coverage Into Sports and Style Sections

This Sunday’s edition of the Washington Post will be the last time local readers get a section all to themselves. Starting Monday, the Post is merging its Metro, Sports, and Style sections into one for the print edition on most days.

In Monday’s note to print subscribers, Executive Editor Matt Murray said the consolidation would not mean fewer stories. Rather, he is attempting to soften the paper’s shrinking of its local coverage as a “reordering of our sections to improve our efficiency in a way that serves journalism and bolsters the strength of our print paper.”

The news was the latest grim memo for Post staff and readers, who have endured a series of humiliations and retrenchments as owner Jeff Bezos attempts to curry favor with convicted felon and President Donald Trump.

“The Grahams said this was a local paper with an international reputation,” longtime Post columnist and editor Robert McCartney says. “Bezos has changed that.” 

McCartney, who served as a Metro editor before writing a column about the region, recalls when the Post eliminated its stand-alone print Business section back in 2009. Most readers viewed it as an anomaly. Now nothing is sacred.

“I will outlive the print edition itself,” McCartney says, predicting the outlet might opt to abandon its seven-day print schedule, as other American daily papers have done.

Aside from Murray’s note to subscribers, there was no announcement to staff, and the outlet has not published any press release or notification on its website.

The final Metro stand-alone section will print this coming Sunday, June 22. Starting the next day, the paper will reduce the total number of sections most days to three or four; on Tuesdays and Saturdays the Post will print only two sections, including the new Metro/Sports/Style.

The Style section will get its own front every day of the week, and Sports will get its own section two days a week. Metro never will have its own front, getting sandwiched between other sections every day starting Monday, according to Murray’s email.

Post Sports Editor Jason Murray declined to comment on the loss of his stand-alone section, and Executive Local Editor Jamie Stockwell did not respond to emails seeking comment. The Post’s PR team also did not respond to questions about the changes, nor did Murray.

The changes come as Post readership is declining at an alarming rate, even in an era where all newspapers are struggling to attract readers.

According to data provided to City Paper by the Alliance for Audited Media, the Post’s paid average daily circulation is now down to just 97,000, with roughly 160,000 on Sundays. That’s a fraction of the 250,000 average daily circulation five years ago, when the Post was one of the largest newspapers in the country by circulation.

With no explanation, the Post stopped sharing its circulation and website traffic data with the public several years ago. The decline in circulation has a direct impact on revenue.

In recent months, the Post has seen an unprecedented loss of talent as many of their most accomplished writers have left for competitors. The outlet had an awkward breakup with Opinion Editor David Shipley, who resigned when Bezos announced that the section would only publish pieces in favor of “personal liberties and free markets,” while leaving the job of publishing all other opinions to “the internet.”

“People are still waiting for that Will Lewis magic,” says John Kelly, the longtime Metro columnist who left the paper during a massive buyout at the end of 2023, referring to Bezos’ problematic publisher and CEO.

Kelly says that while he understands the need to consolidate sections, he is irritated that the paper’s editors tried to claim with a straight face that eliminating Metro and Sports as stand-alone sections was good for readers.

“As reporters, we used to hate being told something that wasn’t true,” Kelly says. “He should have just leveled with readers instead of being like a health care company or cable company and saying something that we all know isn’t true.”

If ever there was a time for The Washington Post to thrive, a second Donald Trump administration is it. But the legacy newspaper, whose tagline became “Democracy Dies in Darkness” during Trump’s first term, is instead seeing some of its most recognizable and longest tenured journalists heading for the door.…

January 30th, 2025

The city’s independent book scene finds itself in an interesting moment as national politics have some readers looking for ways to put their money toward causes they believe in. “A lot of people have been talking about leaving Amazon,” Megan Bormet, owner of People’s Book in Takoma Park says, noting…

April 22nd, 2025

Billion with a B: Proposed legislation in Congress that will keep the government funded through September will blow a $1 billion hole in D.C.’s local budget. The congressional continuing resolution will treat D.C. as a federal agency and force it to revert to its 2024 spending levels for the rest…

March 10th, 2025