FWIW - I subscribed to the Post when I moved to DC and finally cancelled last month when a good chunk of the metro staff took buyouts. Pretty much like you said, I'll go read the Times for anything national... And local alternatives like Washington City Paper, DCist, etc are providing better coverage of local issues.
I have a different impression of the Post than you do. I think the Post has *more* local coverage of D.C. than the Times has of NYC. You write that the Post "positioned itself fully as a liberal outpost for those most alarmed by Trump’s autocratic impulses." I don't think of them as particularly liberal. Their columnists and editorial board position themselves as the "responsible center" determined to control the dimensions of the Overton window for Beltway politics. (I concede that I have probably not yet taken notice of some who have been laid off.) I am surprised at the severity of the dropoff in their web traffic which you have reported.
Isn’t the best international coverage by far in the Wall Street Journal? My David Brooksian dad subscribes there because he’s retired and loves to read about China, Europe, and expensive cars.
I subscribe to the Times. Kind of feel like I have to, but $28 a month is a lot (I think that's with the Food app added in). I think the international reporting is the weakest part. The reporting on Israel's invasion of Gaza followed the same arc of its reporting on our invasion of Iraq. Lots of lies by officials repeated. Plenty of general support in op eds. Some pulling back as it becomes clear just how stupid and awful it all is, but not too much. The Post, I've never felt a need. It does indeed look a little more MSNBC, so I stayed away.
Yeah, I said nothing about their arts coverage because I didn't feel I had consumed it enough. I am down on the NYT Book Review and should honestly be consuming more WaPo arts coverage to gauge if it's better. Becca Rothfeld, their nonfiction book critic, is solid. The Times' visual arts coverage seems fine, but I usually read what Jerry Saltz does in NY Magazine
FWIW - I subscribed to the Post when I moved to DC and finally cancelled last month when a good chunk of the metro staff took buyouts. Pretty much like you said, I'll go read the Times for anything national... And local alternatives like Washington City Paper, DCist, etc are providing better coverage of local issues.
I have a different impression of the Post than you do. I think the Post has *more* local coverage of D.C. than the Times has of NYC. You write that the Post "positioned itself fully as a liberal outpost for those most alarmed by Trump’s autocratic impulses." I don't think of them as particularly liberal. Their columnists and editorial board position themselves as the "responsible center" determined to control the dimensions of the Overton window for Beltway politics. (I concede that I have probably not yet taken notice of some who have been laid off.) I am surprised at the severity of the dropoff in their web traffic which you have reported.
Isn’t the best international coverage by far in the Wall Street Journal? My David Brooksian dad subscribes there because he’s retired and loves to read about China, Europe, and expensive cars.
I subscribe to the Times. Kind of feel like I have to, but $28 a month is a lot (I think that's with the Food app added in). I think the international reporting is the weakest part. The reporting on Israel's invasion of Gaza followed the same arc of its reporting on our invasion of Iraq. Lots of lies by officials repeated. Plenty of general support in op eds. Some pulling back as it becomes clear just how stupid and awful it all is, but not too much. The Post, I've never felt a need. It does indeed look a little more MSNBC, so I stayed away.
The thing I read most in the Washington Post is probably their Visual Arts coverage, which is really good.
But I don't buy it, I get it free with a .gov email address.
Yeah, I said nothing about their arts coverage because I didn't feel I had consumed it enough. I am down on the NYT Book Review and should honestly be consuming more WaPo arts coverage to gauge if it's better. Becca Rothfeld, their nonfiction book critic, is solid. The Times' visual arts coverage seems fine, but I usually read what Jerry Saltz does in NY Magazine
Any publication that continues to employ Glenn Kessler as a fact checker deserves to be forgotten.