The Washington Post Pulls About Even With the New York Times in Online Readership

The Washington Post announced Thursday that it had 59.2 million unique readers of its digital properties in September. That’s an “all-time high” for the Post, which has invested heavily in digital since Jeff Bezos purchased the paper in 2013.

The Post saw huge growth in mobile and desktop users, but the key metric here is not in the press release: The Washington Post has just about pulled even with the New York Times in terms of digital readership. Ken Doctor wrote in August that the Times had 59.7 million unique readers; it had about 66 million uniques in September, according to data from the web-measurement firm comScore. (If this stuff interests you, I recommend Ben Freed‘s September story about how the Post is using Amazon Prime to boost its national readership).

Anyway. A recent New York Times marketing survey I took referred to washingtonpost.com as a “Regional newspaper” site. The company may wish to update that description.

Andrew Beaujon

Senior editor

Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. His book A Bigger Field Awaits Us: The Scottish Soccer Team That Fought the Great War was published in 2018. He lives in Del Ray.