Leading publisher loses $77m and develops an intelligence product: The Washington Post is now a data business
The Washington Post's recent layoffs underscore a shift in its business model already apparent in the launch of its new WP Intelligence product
The biggest story of the year in Data & Analytics may well be AI, but the increasing convergence of media and Data & Analytics products is a structural change that will change the face of both industries. In this week’s newsletter, we discuss one instance of that convergence. The Washington Post’s entry into the Data & Analytics sector with the launch of WP Intelligence has not been a major story, but deserves attention in light of the publisher’s recent reduction in force and business model shift.
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The Washington Post crosses the chasm from media to data
In early 2026, the Washington Post announced layoffs affecting roughly a third of its staff across editorial and business functions and including local, international and sports coverage. The layoffs followed years of financial stress at the news outlet; Publisher Will Lewis told staff in 2024 that the Post had lost ~$77m the previous year and its audience decreased 50% from its 2020 peak. Lewis stepped down as CEO and Publisher of the post soon after the most recent round of layoffs.
During that meeting with staffers in 2024, Lewis candidly said the Post was “in a hole” and rolled out a plan to rescue the paper. The plan included premium subscription tiers, similar to those sold by Axios and Politico, to tap new revenue streams and move up-market.
WP Intelligence
Since, the Washington Post has indeed rolled out new products: as of Q3 2025, it offers a new research and networking platform, WP Intelligence.
WP Intelligence is an insights platform offering research, briefings and networking opportunities for business and policy leaders. The platform is organized around four core topics:
AI & Tech
Energy & Climate
Global Security
Health Care
Its products include weekly newsletters, intelligence reports, live intelligence briefings, and private networking opportunities exclusively available to members.
Live Briefings are interactive discussions focused on critical business and policy issues members;
Councils are quarterly in-person discussions for executives that offer opportunities to connect with analysts and fellow industry leaders;
Weekly intelligence reports and industry briefs synthesize critical developments and their implications;
WP Intelligence offers a graphics library that houses charts and visualizations produced based on proprietary datasets often used by executives for internal strategy documents.
WP Intelligence hired analysts to publish “actionable memos,” which will provide forward-looking insights into how a company may react to a topic covered.
Subscriptions to WP Intelligence are sold via enterprise contracts, reinforcing its positioning as a B2B intelligence and executive membership platform rather than a premium news tier. Media industry sources indicate that average contract value is now around $15k / year, with some clients paying over $100k annually.
At this stage, WP Intelligence more closely resembles a peer-led research, events, and executive network platform than a pure-play data business. The platform may further evolve into a more traditional policy intelligence platform, though there is precedent for highly profitable, scaled and influential platforms serving executives and decision makers that combine research, data and peer-to-peer networking products.
Attractive economics
The Post’s move into higher-margin B2B information products is strategically coherent and mirrors the playbook successfully used by other premium media companies, such as Dow Jones, Politico, and The Financial Times. The economics of B2B intelligence platforms differ materially from consumer news subscription: large enterprise contracts and high renewal rates typically generate higher margins and predictable revenue.
For a publisher with deep policy coverage and access in Washington DC, the opportunity to convert editorial expertise into structured intelligence products is compelling. And if the content and conversations prove substantive, there is significant upside to be realized if clients rely on WP Intelligence to inform critical business and policy decisions.
Playing the geopolitical VIX angle
A core differentiator for WP Intelligence is the Post’s relationships with movers and shakers in DC, proximity to the center of US politics, and its unique vantage point on geopolitics and policy. The product will most certainly leverage these strengths.
Perhaps the greatest tailwind for business, though, is the immense demand for geopolitical intelligence solutions. The past several years have seen significantly more geopolitical volatility than previous decades due to ongoing wars, political upheaval and geopolitical rivalries boiling over. This has in turn increased demand for information and analysis to understand the potential implications of geopolitical uncertainty and, where available, quantitative data to measure and manage risk.
Businesses like Ergo, whose Flashpoints Forum offers a community of business and government leaders that exchange insights on geopolitical and economic issues, and Horizon Engage, which provides country-specific quantitative risk scores, have been beneficiaries of this demand. If WP Intelligence can similarly become a critical resource of insight for business and policy leaders, it will be well-positioned to capture the increased demand.
Synergies between news and data
The strategic appeal of WP Intelligence lies not only in capturing demand for geopolitical intelligence and leveraging the Post’s unique position in DC; there are also structural synergies between news and data businesses.
Timely reporting and on-the-ground sources provide a stream of qualitative inputs for briefings and research reports;
Journalism creates proprietary datasets, such as interviews, that can be packaged as reusable content for subscription intelligence products;
News offers a distribution and marketing channel for data;
Professional readership base is a cross-sell target for intelligence products;
Media companies can leverage readership data as a lead generation tool.
Further, adding data and research products alongside traditional news, whose revenue can be either subscription- or ad-driven, serves to diversify revenue to recurring subscriptions with higher contract values.
A familiar playbook
The Washington post is not the first major media company to pursue a hybrid news–data product strategy. Several leading publishers have successfully expanded into adjacent data and intelligence products:
Arizent has recently pushed beyond its financial, banking and credit news verticals into enterprise data and research products. The company has launched a payments intelligence product under its American Banker brand and a legal intelligence product under its Bond Buyer brand;
Axios expanded its Axios Pro Rata VC, PE, and M&A newsletter and now offers a lightweight subscription database, Axios Pro Deals. Pro Deals provides data on 60k+ transactions, built on Pro Rata’s deals coverage. Axios also hosts Axios BFD, an annual event for dealmakers and finance professionals;
The Financial Times offers some 18 niche news and intelligence products through its FT Specialist brands. These include brands like MandateWire, which tracks institutional investor RFPs, FT Locations, which provides data on foreign direct investment, and Banker Database, which combines bank financial data and rankings. Recent years saw FT Specialist revenue grow more than 10% annually, a critical growth driver as the overall FT business passed GBP500m in annual revenue;
Politico’s policy intelligence product, POLITICO Pro, was reported in 2021 to have comprised half of Politico’s $200m in annual revenue. POLITICO Pro was originally a paid news service, not a comprehensive data platform, and is possibly an even larger part of the overall business today;
Wall Street Journal has prioritized its data and intelligence offerings via its WSJ Pro vertical products, offering proprietary databases, events and executive membership platforms across verticals like private equity, cyber security, and bankruptcy. WSJ’s Dow Jones parent has invested heavily in B2B subscription data products, with particular focus on its Energy and Risk & Compliance franchises. Dow Jones executed several transactions in recent years, including the acquisitions of energy market data provider OPIS in 2022, export trade data provider WorldECR in 2024, geopolitical risk intelligence providers Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly Intelligence in 2025, and a strategic investment in risk intelligence provider Ripjar in 2024, among others. For the first time, more than 50% of Dow Jones profitability and close to 40% of overall revenue was driven by the company’s B2B segment in 2024.
Common themes
Several themes emerge from the above examples, all of which apply to the Washington Post and its WP Intelligence product:
Traditional media foundations with strong editorial brands and world-class reputations;
Strong niches such as policy, finance or geopolitics that each publisher leverages to build intelligence products;
Datasets and intelligence products adjacent or complementary to core coverage areas;
Professional readership base that can be upgraded to higher-ticket B2B subscriptions;
Business model diversification and margin uplift as all of the publishers seek to diversify away from volatile advertising and consumer subscriptions into higher-margin enterprise subscription-driven revenues.
Emerging strategic acquirers
For Data & Analytics industry stakeholders, one of the clearest implications is that leading media companies are increasingly strategic acquirers of specialist data or intelligence assets. Dow Jones’ M&A activity represents a deliberate effort to build a portfolio of proprietary data products; Politico has also made several acquisitions around its Pro product, including its acquisition of Statehill in 2018 and Policylead earlier this month. The FT and its relatively new FT Ventures unit are on the hunt for acquisition and investment targets; Arizent is reportedly also pursuing tuck-in acquisition opportunities in relevant verticals.
Against these peers, the Washington Post’s launch of WP Intelligence is best seen as an opening move and initial push into Data & Analytics products, though it may be late to the game. Today, the product is still primarily content- and briefing-driven with some data. The strategic logic and peer examples, however, point to a natural evolution: more structured datasets and workflow tools, and potentially M&A to accelerate entry into specific niches.
Everything is a data business
Bottom line: The Washington Post is now a data business.