The Washington Post announced massive layoffs on 4 February, including cutting about a third of its staff, shutting down entire desks, and closing foreign bureaus. Executive Editor Matt Murray justified the move as a ‘strategic reset’ necessary to adapt to changing user habits and technology, while insiders described it as a ‘bloodbath’. The truth is that the decision is one of the clearest signs yet of how fast legacy media is falling apart after decades of manipulating the public and serving the establishment.
It is unsurprising that both former Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former executive editor Martin Baron blame the outlet’s owner, Jeff Bezos, and ‘corporate decisions’ for what is happening instead of taking responsibility for making people despise and distrust legacy media.
Collapse of Trust and Legitimacy
Because, as mentioned before, the chaos at the Post is not an isolated case. It mirrors a far bigger story—people simply are not turning to legacy news the way they did in past decades. We need only look at the numbers: in 2024, media trust in the US fell to a historic low, with only 31 per cent of Americans having a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of trust in mass media, compared to 72 per cent in the 1970s. According to Gallup, legacy media is now the least trusted civic and political institution it surveys.
This distrust is clearly reflected in the ever-decreasing numbers of subscribers, viewers, and readers of legacy media outlets and television channels. The Washington Post has lost hundreds of thousands of online subscribers, seen search traffic fall by roughly half in recent years, and recorded tens of millions of dollars in annual losses before deciding on mass layoffs.
‘According to Gallup, legacy media is now the least trusted civic and political institution it surveys’
Even the far stronger The New York Times, with more than 12 million digital-only subscribers, is experiencing slowing growth, declining engagement with core news content, and increasing reliance on lifestyle products to sustain revenue.
At the same time, cable and broadcast audiences continue to erode as millions of households abandon pay TV each year, major news networks suffer double-digit to more than 40 per cent ratings declines, and cable’s share of total television viewing falls to barely over one-fifth while streaming dominates both attention and advertising. In the US, Fox News remains the dominant network; however, it is also struggling with a significant loss of audience.
A New Information Order
While legacy media struggles to survive, social media news consumption is paving the way to lead the new information order. According to the 2025 Digital News Report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than half of US adults (54 per cent) now say they get news from platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram—more than those who still rely on TV (50 per cent) or traditional news websites and apps (48 per cent). Six social media platforms now reach more than 10 per cent of American adults weekly for news: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, and TikTok.
The trend is, unsurprisingly, driven by younger generations. While only 15 per cent of adults aged 18–29 say they follow the news all or most of the time, compared to 62 per cent of those over 65, this reflects not disengagement but relocation. 76 per cent of young adults now get news from social media at least sometimes, versus just 28 per cent of seniors—a 48-point generational gap revealing where the future of news consumption is headed.
Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook dominate this shift, each reaching roughly 40 per cent or more of Americans under 30 for news, with TikTok alone used regularly by 43 per cent of this cohort and social media overall far outpacing news websites. Four in ten young adults now rely on online news influencers and political commentators, further digging the grave of legacy media. The audience shaping the future has already moved on.
‘The audience shaping the future has already moved on’
It may be only a coincidence—though it is not—that overwhelmingly liberal legacy media is declining at the same time as the international order it helped to establish, strengthen, and defend, even as that order became increasingly indefensible. ‘Free press cannot fulfill its mission if it is starved of the resources it needs to survive. And when the newsrooms are weakened, our republic is weakened,’ Nancy Pelosi said recently in a speech to members of the Washington Press Club Foundation. Many defenders of the old guard still describe legacy media as the ‘lifeblood’ of democracy.
However, as the world order in which we live changes, and the institutions of the liberal international order fade into irrelevance—like the United Nations—it seems, fortunately, that legacy media will fare no better. Other outlets watch the Post’s dance of death with growing anxiety and wariness, knowing that soon it will be their turn. After decades of false narratives, cover-ups for elites, and smear campaigns against the political opponents of their masters, reality has become so clear that it can no longer be distorted.
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