At Least We Know the Washington Post Isn’t Buying Views, And Why That Actually Matters
There’s a strange comfort in knowing something is genuinely, organically failing.
The Washington Post, a newspaper with a Pulitzer count most outlets would kill for, just launched a podcast. It’s called "Make It Make Sense." It cost $80,000 in video gear alone. It has a studio with wood paneling, a bar setup, and cowboy imagery. It has editors, producers, and the full weight of a Jeff Bezos-owned institution behind it.
It also has videos with 30 views. Sometimes fewer. Some episodes start mid-sentence with hosts trailing off into silence. On Apple Podcasts, it holds a 2.3-star rating. On Spotify, 2.8. The most generous review reads: "This is bad and the people making it should feel bad."
And yet, here’s the weird part, there’s something almost admirable about the whole mess. Because as bad as the numbers are, at least we know one thing for certain: the Washington Post isn’t buying views.
That might sound like a low bar. It is. But in 2026, in the world of vanity podcasts and venture capital content plays, it’s actually worth talking about.
1. The Podcast Nobody Watches
Let’s rewind. In early 2026, Jeff Bezos and opinion editor Adam O’Neal decided to overhaul the Washington Post’s opinion section. The vision: make it "personality-driven and video-focused," centered around commentary on "personal liberties and free markets." The flagship product would be a YouTube podcast called "Make It Make Sense," hosted by O’Neal and members of the editorial board.
The execution? Well.
The videos feel like they were made in 2012 by someone who has never watched YouTube. Hosts wear business casual that looks air-dropped from a Pret a Manger. There are no grabby hooks. One episode begins with a host saying "The president of the United States is going to head to the Supreme Court… uh, I think this might be the first time a sitting president…" and then another host cuts in: "I think so. I think." Then silence. "This is, uhh, we’ll confirm that. We’ll fact check that." That’s the first 19 seconds.
The topics are straight out of a right-wing grab bag: "What the Media Got Wrong During Covid." "Weed Isn’t As Harmless As You Think." "College is too easy." "Billionaires actually do pay enough taxes." It’s the kind of content that feels focus-grouped by someone who’s never been in a focus group.
The result? After 179 videos, the channel had 190 subscribers. Many episodes drew only a few dozen views, some ticked into the triple digits, but mostly because people were "hate watching" and clowning on the podcast in comment sections.
2. The Silver Lining: "At Least They’re Not Buying Views"
Now, here’s the sentence that launched a thousand think pieces. Writing for 404 Media, journalist Jason Koebler noted: "The best thing that can be said about this project is that at least we know Jeff Bezos is not buying views on YouTube, which is a common practice for vanity venture capitalist podcasts that no one wants to watch or listen to."
That line is doing a lot of work. It’s funny because it’s true. But it’s also revealing a quiet, uncomfortable reality about the digital content economy: a lot of the numbers you see are fake.
Think about it. You’ve probably stumbled across a podcast with a slick thumbnail, a famous-ish host, and 50,000 views per episode, only to click and find the comments section eerily empty. No real discussion. No engagement. Just a hollow audience. That’s often the fingerprint of purchased views.
The Washington Post’s podcast, for all its flaws, doesn’t have that problem. It’s honestly, transparently bombing. And in a weird way, that’s refreshing.
3. Why People Buy YouTube Views (And Who Does It)
If you’ve never looked into it, the view-buying industry is surprisingly vast. A quick Google search surfaces dozens of services offering "real, high-retention YouTube views" starting at a few dollars per thousand. Some promise algorithm-friendly engagement. Others sell bot-driven views that YouTube eventually purges. It’s a cat-and-mouse game that’s been running for over a decade.
Why do people do it? The logic is simple: social proof. A video with 50,000 views looks more credible than one with 50. In the venture capital world, where founders are often trying to build personal brands to attract deal flow, buying views is an open secret. Launch a podcast, pump the numbers, look like a thought leader, rinse, repeat.
The problem, of course, is that views alone don’t build audiences. They don’t create trust. They’re what marketers call a vanity metric, a number that looks impressive on a pitch deck but doesn’t correlate with actual influence or revenue. It’s like filling a restaurant with cardboard cutouts of diners. Looks busy. Nobody’s ordering the pasta.
3a. The Vanity Venture Capital Podcast Problem
There’s a specific genre of content that the "buying views" critique is aimed at. You know the type: a venture capitalist starts a podcast interviewing other venture capitalists about "the future of AI" or "lessons in scaling." The production is polished, the takes are lukewarm, and the view count somehow sits at 50K per episode despite zero cultural footprint. No one you know watches it. No one shares it. It just… exists.
The Washington Post’s podcast, in some bizarre way, avoids this fate by being too incompetent to even fake it. And that’s the joke Koebler is making. It’s so bad that buying views wouldn’t save it, and at least they didn’t try.
4. How the Washington Post Lost Its YouTube Audience
It didn’t have to be this way. The Washington Post used to be genuinely good at YouTube.
For years, journalist Dave Jorgenson ran the Post’s TikTok and YouTube presence, quirky, self-aware, and surprisingly viral. He built a channel that felt native to the platform, not a newspaper awkwardly cosplaying as a creator. In April 2025, the Washington Post Universe generated nearly 54 million views on YouTube. By September 2025, after Jorgenson left, that number had crashed to 8.2 million. An 85% decline.
Jorgenson left to start his own company. He now has 328,000 YouTube subscribers and 317,000 TikTok followers. The Washington Post TikTok, meanwhile, now exclusively posts repurposed stock footage from news wires.
Then came the layoffs. The Post’s video team was gutted, down from 60 staffers to just 3. When the newsroom won two Pulitzers in 2026, they had to scramble to rehire laid-off video operators just to livestream the celebration.
So when you see the "Make It Make Sense" podcast flopping with 30 views, you’re not just watching a bad show. You’re watching the downstream consequence of dismantling institutional knowledge and replacing it with executive hubris.
5. The $80,000 Studio That Nobody Asked For
Here’s a detail that stings. While the newsroom was shedding journalists, the opinion section was building a custom podcast studio, fresh couches, a bar setup, wood-paneled backdrops reminiscent of Joe Rogan’s set, and $80,000 in new video equipment.
A former staffer told Status News: "It does feel like this is just for an audience of one," alluding to Bezos. "That audience of one is happy to put down money for a studio and programming that doesn’t serve any of the existing audience."
Another put it more bluntly: "No one is even there anymore to make sure things run properly."
This is the tragedy beneath the comedy. The Washington Post still employs brilliant journalists doing important work. But the resources are flowing toward a billionaire’s vanity project that almost no one consumes, and, crucially, that even the intended conservative audience doesn’t seem to want.
6. What This Tells Us About Digital Strategy: 3 Lessons
Alright, let’s extract something useful from this wreckage. Whether you’re a creator, a marketer, or someone who just wants their content to matter, there are real lessons here.
Lesson 1: Views Are Not a Strategy
The Washington Post has spent millions on video initiatives over the years. They had a successful TikTok channel. They had millions of YouTube views. But views without a sustainable model are just numbers. When the person who built the audience left, the audience left with them. That’s the danger of building on rented land with rented talent.
Vanity metrics, whether you buy them or earn them, don’t pay the bills if you can’t convert attention into loyalty.
Lesson 2: Platform Fluency Can’t Be Faked
Watching the "Make It Make Sense" videos, you get the uncanny feeling that the people making them have never actually consumed the kind of content they’re trying to produce. The thumbnails are weird. The pacing is off. There’s no hook. It’s the equivalent of someone who’s never cooked trying to open a restaurant by reading a cookbook in the lobby.
You can’t shortcut platform fluency. You either spend the hours watching, learning, and iterating, or you hire people who already have. The Washington Post did the latter, then fired them.
Lesson 3: Authentic Failure Beats Fake Success
This is the heart of the whole thing. If the Washington Post had bought 100,000 views for each episode, the numbers would look fine on a quarterly report. But the emptiness would eventually surface. The comments would be dead. The subscribers wouldn’t convert. The illusion would cost more to maintain than the reality.
Organic failure, weirdly, is more valuable than purchased success, because at least failure teaches you something. Fake views teach you nothing except how to spend money on nothing.
There’s Something Freeing About an Honest Flop
The Washington Post’s "Make It Make Sense" podcast is a failure. A genuine, unvarnished, 30-views-per-episode failure. It’s the product of misplaced priorities, severed institutional knowledge, and a billionaire’s whim that nobody asked for.
But it’s also an honest failure. And in a digital landscape flooded with bought engagement, filtered realities, and vanity metrics masquerading as influence, that honesty counts for something. Not much. But something.
The next time you see a podcast with suspiciously high views and suspiciously low engagement, remember the Washington Post. At least they had the decency to fail in public, without padding the numbers.
What do you think? Have you encountered podcasts or channels that seem to be buying their audience? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear your stories. And if you’re building something real (even if the numbers are small right now), keep going. Honest audiences are built one genuine viewer at a time.