Deterioration of the Washington Post’s subscriber base continued on Tuesday, hours after its proprietor, Jeff Bezos, defended the decision to forgo formally endorsing a presidential candidate as part of an effort to restore trust in the media.
The publication has now shed 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was made public on Friday, according to the NPR reporter David Folkenflik.
A day earlier, 200,000 had left according to the same outlet.
The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.
I don’t imagine they thought that this would literally decimate their subscriber base.*
Unless the former subscribers were executed, that’s not the literal definition of decimate.
Historically (dating back to the 1600s) it could also be used for tithing or taxing one tenth of an amount too. Are you executing their money?
No, but WaPo is not literally paying a tithe or tax.