The Washington Post announced it would eliminate approximately 300 journalists—roughly one-third of its newsroom—including its entire Middle East team, foreign bureaus in key markets, and its storied sports and books sections. Executive Editor Matt Murray was blunt about the reason: "The company's structure is rooted in a different era. In areas such as video, the outlet hasn't kept up with consumer habits."
Translation: Video is happening, whether traditional journalists like it or not. The Buggles warned us in 1979 that "Video Killed the Radio Star." Now it's also killing the foreign desk.
For CEOs and communications professionals navigating global markets, this restructuring signals two fundamental shifts that demand an immediate strategic response: the bifurcation of journalism into incompatible models and the accelerating inadequacy of US-based media for understanding global business risk.
The bifurcation of media
The future of journalism is splitting into two irreconcilable paths. Either you're producing content that is niche, erudite, and expensive—specialized intelligence for sophisticated audiences willing to pay premium prices. Or you're producing content that is mass-market, unlettered, and bargain basement—optimized for volume, video views, and advertising revenue.
There is no middle ground left.
The Post is betting on the latter. Murray's memo to staff made clear the paper is pivoting toward "high-intent digital verticals" focused on technology, climate, and wellness content designed to drive subscriptions through SEO and video engagement. They're shuttering books and sports not because these sections lost readers, but because they don't fit an AI-integrated, video-first distribution model optimized for "consumer habits."
This is the same strategy driving every legacy outlet and notable, since The Post is facing a reported $177 million loss and a 50% drop in organic search traffic. When you can't compete with specialized boutiques charging $2,000 annually for proprietary analysis, you pivot to producing content that competes with TikTok and YouTube for attention. The result is a media landscape where nuanced geopolitical analysis and cultural context—the "soft power" signals that often precede political or market shifts—become luxury goods rather than widely available public resources.
For corporate communications professionals, this bifurcation creates a painful choice.
Do you invest in expensive, specialized intelligence services to maintain information advantage? Or do you accept that your competitors operating with superficial, video-optimized media summaries will miss critical developments until it's too late? The companies that make the right choice will maintain a strategic advantage. Those who assume high-quality geopolitical intelligence will remain freely available are making a costly mistake.
The American media's blind spot
The second trend is equally critical: US-based media outlets are systematically retreating from serious international coverage precisely when global business complexity demands the opposite.
When The Post eliminates its entire Middle East team and closes foreign bureaus while emphasizing that the remaining international presence will focus "almost exclusively on national security issues," they're describing a media environment increasingly incapable of serving multinational corporations.
This creates an urgent imperative for US business leaders and communications teams: you must diversify your information sources beyond American outlets. Relying exclusively on US media for international intelligence is professional malpractice.
Consider what you're missing when your news diet consists solely of domestic sources. The BBC provides unmatched global reach and cultural context across regions that American media ignores. Nikkei offers Asia-Pacific business intelligence that no US outlet matches. Bloomberg and the Financial Times deliver financial and regulatory analysis that connects the dots between markets. The Times of London, Sydney Morning Herald, and Singapore Straits Times provide perspectives on how international partners actually view US policy—insight you'll never get from Washington-centric reporting.
Even the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, despite their quality, ultimately filter global events through American interests and priorities. When The Post announces that its international coverage will emphasize national security over commercial developments, it's simply making explicit what's already implicit across US media: global news is framed through Washington's strategic lens rather than business reality.
For communications professionals developing stakeholder engagement strategies, this matters enormously. You cannot effectively engage European regulators, Asian partners, or Middle Eastern governments if your understanding of their priorities comes exclusively from US sources that explain how those regions affect American interests. You need to read what they read, understand what they value, and recognize how they perceive your company's actions within their political and cultural contexts.
What this means for strategy
The Post's restructuring is a forcing function. It eliminates comfortable assumptions about freely available, high-quality international intelligence. Communications professionals must now make deliberate choices about information sources, recognizing that media fragmentation creates real operational risk for companies navigating tariff volatility, supply chain restructuring, and government engagement across jurisdictions.
Caracal Global specializes in this intersection—helping clients navigate the geopolitical complexities of business through intelligence, strategy, and communications expertise grounded in globalization and American politics.
The video revolution and the retreat of US media from global coverage are not separate trends. They're symptoms of the same disease: the systematic degradation of shared information infrastructure in an era when complexity demands the opposite.
The companies that recognize this early, invest in diverse international sources, and build communications strategies around sophisticated rather than superficial analysis will maintain a competitive advantage. Those waiting for legacy media to reverse course will find themselves operating with information asymmetries that favor better-informed competitors.
-Marc
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Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and communications advisor. He is the founder of Caracal Global and is writing a book entitled Globalization and American Politics: How International Economics Redefined American Foreign Policy and Domestic Politics.
