Washington, D.C., is not a news desert in the way that thousands of American communities have become. It has a dense media ecosystem of national publications, public broadcasters, local TV, and a growing number of digital outlets. But for decades, the Post has been in a league of its own in its capacity for deep investigative work.
The local reporting team, once a cornerstone of accountability journalism in Washington, was reduced by 70 percent in the latest cuts. Prior to the cuts, City Cast CEO David Plotz estimated that the Post originated 75 percent of D.C.-area stories that got picked up by other outlets. “Even people who weren’t consuming Post Local news were consuming it — they just didn’t realize it,” he said. The paper also eliminated sports coverage, shuttered foreign bureaus, including those in the Middle East, just before the war against Iran started.
The latest round of layoffs is the culmination of years of turbulence at the Post. In 2023, 240 staffers took buyouts, another round followed in 2024, and a 4% cut last year affected dozens more roles. Leadership decisions added to the strain, with Bezos’s 2024 decision not to endorse Kamala Harris for president resulting in reader backlash that reportedly cost the paper around 300,000 subscriptions — about 12 percent of its subscriber base. Top-down changes to the opinions page triggered another wave of cancellations as well as some high-profile resignations.
Even in its diminished state, the Post was bigger and had more resources than its local competitors. Now, after even more cuts, the question is if the surge in local coverage by smaller players will be enough to compensate for the losses at the Post. At a March 25th panel hosted by the Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship, local newsroom leaders described a future defined not by one dominant institution, but by a network of smaller players.
“Now [After the layoffs at the Post] that ecosystem has to reset — there’s been a fire, and new species have to come in and build up,” said Plotz in an interview with Nieman Lab, alluding to the crop of news organizations that have announced, or are planning to expand their coverage.
City Cast, the for-profit podcast and newsletter network with a presence in multiple American cities that Plotz leads, announced plans to hire at least four reporters for its D.C. operation. It has already brought on Emma Uber, a former Post Local breaking news reporter, and is hiring an executive editor and managing editor.
The Baltimore Banner, Maryland’s largest news organization, announced an accelerated expansion into Prince George’s County, a D.C suburb, with plans to have reporters covering education, local government, and community there by April. A week later, it announced it would also hire reporters to cover D.C. sports — including the Nationals and Commanders — an opportunistic move directly responding to the Post’s decision to eliminate its sports desk, according to Banner CEO Bob Cohn. Observers have noted that the Banner has registered the domain names dcbanner.com and thedcbanner.com.
Two years ago, former staffers of the DCist website launched The 51st, a worker-run nonprofit co-op. The organization, which describes itself as a newsroom “where journalists and community members are the decision makers — not billionaire owners, wealthy shareholders, or a C-Suite with limited experience in local news,” had been building steadily when the Post layoffs arrived.
Since then The 51st has gained more than 1,100 new paying members, bringing total paid membership to nearly 4,400 out of more than 15,500 total subscribers. Executive Editor Christina Sturdivant Sani, who spoke at the March 25 panel, noted that around 70% of The 51st’s revenue comes from readers — a model she sees as fundamental to the organization’s mission of journalism as public service.
The publication is trying to model something different — including its financing structure. The organization recently received a loan from the D.C. Solidarity Economy Loan Fund, a cooperatively-governed nonprofit financial organization. “Seed Commons represents a real alternative,” The 51st wrote in an announcement. “They’re a network of cooperatives and community-led organizations that believe capital should serve people, rather than extract profits.”
It hopes to prove that journalism can thrive without billionaire backing. Still, Higgins acknowledges that the 51st’s team “lacks the resources to fill the void left by the Washington Post.”
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One of the most ambitious expansion announcements has come from NOTUS – News of the United States – a digital news outlet founded in 2024 by Politico cofounder and billionaire media entrepreneur Robert Allbritton. Despite being a newcomer in DC journalism, NOTUS has already made waves on Capitol Hill. A memo posted on X outlines Allbritton’s plans, which according to him, were “precipitated” by the layoffs. Among them are doubling NOTUS’ staff of around 50 reporters by the end of 2026, hiring some of the top talent laid off from the Post, and expanding local coverage.
“The world of Washington journalism is in a moment of generational change,” Allbritton, NOTUS Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve, and CEO Arielle Elliott wrote in the memo. “We’re going to seize it by building the next great Washington newsroom — a team of reporters and editors who will cover government, politics, policy, local news, and D.C. sports with the power of The Washington Post in the 1970s, the punch of Politico in the 2010s, and the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 2026.”
The publication’s name is also expected to change, with Allbritton working with trademark attorneys on options — and reportedly interested in including “Washington” in the new name. The Washington Star and Washington Sun trademarks were recently registered.
Integral to NOTUS’ ambitions and to its long-term talent pipeline is the Allbritton Journalism Institute (AJI), an independent nonprofit launched in 2023 that trains emerging journalists and places them as full-time fellows at NOTUS. AJI currently has around 20 fellows at any given time, drawn from across the country, with more than 80% coming from local news backgrounds. The fellows’ work is also distributed through the Washington Bureau Initiative, a program that co-publishes coverage with local outlet partners in 12 states.
Leading AJI is Kevin Grant, who became its executive director earlier this year. Grant is a familiar name to readers of this column, having co-founded the Ground Truth Project alongside Charles Sennott, and spent a decade building the organization, including launching both Report for America and Report for the World, before departing in 2024.
Grant said he was drawn to AJI’s mission and excited by the organization’s culture. “I love their mission to help bring next-gen journalists from underrepresented backgrounds into the D.C. press corps and love their focus on strengthening democracy,” he said. Grant is careful to distinguish between AJI and NOTUS itself. AJI is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit, and an educational institution. Still, he adds, “we’re going to work closely with NOTUS on making sure that our fellows are able to contribute to that expansion in local coverage. In that way, we will have a direct role to play in bolstering local coverage in the D.C. area.”
On what it feels like to watch the D.C. journalism landscape transform, Grant was measured. “I think it’s something like a process of mourning. There’s some anger. And, as a number of organizations are stepping up, including NOTUS, to hire some of the incredible journalists who have been let go, there’s also a sense of hope that what these organizations are building will be really strong.”
The organizations expanding are diverse in their models, their missions, and their resources, but what the Post provided cannot be replaced overnight. News leaders like City Cast’s Plotz remained optimistic.
“We’ll do a good job collectively filling the void.”
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This article originally appeared on Charlessennott.substack.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.co
