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The original was posted on /r/washingtondc by /u/taulover on 2024-07-02 15:21:03+00:00.
As y’all probably know, the Capital Weather Gang newsletter ended this week. I thought it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, as we were promised to still “receive our daily digit and links to the full forecast via Post Local, our new weekday newsletter designed to offer you the most important news from around D.C., Maryland and Virginia.” I figured they were basically just combining adding the weather to The 7 DMV and providing a combined product. Sure, you need to subscribe to see the full forecast now, but I’m fine paying for convenience if the product is good (or just using public library access to WaPo).
But nope. It’s so much worse. I cannot stress how much worse Post Local is compared to the 7 DMV. Gone are the cleanly presented points and summaries of the most important DMV headlines. Instead, there is a deluge of ancillary content completely unrelated to the DMV. Cards advertising WaPo games and other newsletters are larger and more prominent. Worse, a solid quarter of the articles aren’t even DMV-related - completely irrelevant national news is just inserted in. (Part of the misunderstanding seems to be from inserting articles from southern Virginia, which very much is not in the DMV despite the newsletter’s tagline being “Your guide to the DMV.”)
“No one knows Washington quite like us,” WaPo’s new Executive Local Editor Jamie Stockwell wrote in the first issue of Post Local. These sorts of statements feel increasingly hollow as WaPo’s leadership repeatedly makes it clear they do not understand DC. (Ironically, based on her Twitter and LinkedIn, although she began her career here, Stockwell has not lived in DC for nearly 2 decades and appears to have opted to remain in NYC despite returning to WaPo.) CEO Will Lewis is reportedly planning on introducing a new Local+ subscription with exclusive newsletters. I do not know how to explain that first gutting your existing local offerings only alienates that same audience base.
Unsurprisingly, the former writer of The 7 DMV, Hau Chu, is not the one “curating” Post Local. I hope that he is okay.
Going forward, I will be using RSS email notifications to receive links to Capital Weather Gang morning forecasts. (This also has the advantage of working on the weekends, which is probably when I need these forecasts the most…) And no offence to WaPo’s new British CEO, but this switch has only turned me away from using your publication for local news. I will be continuing to subscribe and donate to 730DC for that (which funnily enough, went on break this week, allowing me to truly see how abysmal WaPo’s replacement offering is).