The Washington Post's Books Section Worked

"What does it mean to subscribe to something? Whether we mean a belief or a magazine, the definition is complicated. I began subscribing to The New Yorker when I was a sophomore in college; more than 30 years later, I have yet to stop and I feel strongly that I never will. Yet during some of those years-okay, many of them-the weekly issues have piled up in my home and gone mostly unread between biannual days of bingeing and purging. If these reading habits could somehow be converted into digital clicks, the resulting "traffic report" might look like I don't want the product at all."

"Earlier this month, I was one of a great number of people laid off from The Washington Post. Before the past year and a half of staggering self-inflicted wounds-culminating in the firing of hundreds of journalists, including war reporters, arts critics, and the entire Sports and Books sections-the paper had survived and briefly thrived by emphasizing digital subscriptions. This strategy has become essential in the dwindling newspaper industry, given steep declines in revenue from print advertising."

"I started at the paper in late summer 2022 as the editor of Book World, a section that the Post was re-expanding, restoring a stand-alone print review that had been shut down in 2009. I'd spent 11 wonderful years on the Books desk at The New York Times, and I knew that moving to any other paper at this point in history was a risky proposition, but the chance to bolster general-interest literary coverage in this country was too tempting to pass up. Within a year or two, my leap of faith seemed to be vindicated: All signs pointed to us gaining (and keeping) readers at Book World."

The narrator has kept a long-term subscription to The New Yorker for more than thirty years despite long stretches of unread issues, illustrating that subscription does not always equal constant consumption. Those intermittent reading habits would look like disinterest if judged only by digital clicks. The narrator was recently laid off from The Washington Post after substantial newsroom cuts, following a strategy that had emphasized digital subscriptions to offset declining print-ad revenue. The narrator joined the Post in 2022 to revive a standalone Book World section, and the section quickly grew readership and loyal attention from print subscribers.

Read at The Atlantic