- 🧵 1/ We’re devastated about the layoffs at The Washington Post, which are gutting D.C. reporting. These journalists are an incalculable loss for our city. The 51st’s mission has always felt urgent, but now we know it needs to kick into high gear.
- 2/ We aren’t going to pretend we alone can fill this void — at least, not yet. The Post has the resources to employ dozens of local journalists, to fund large-scale investigations, and to cover the entire metro area.
- 3/ The 51st has four full-time employees, a year and a half of publishing under our belt, and the strength of being funded almost entirely by subscriptions and donations from readers like you. ➡️ Join us: 51st.news/signup
- 4/ AND we have something else: We’re a newsroom that Bezos can’t destroy. Executives at The Post made a strategic decision to abandon D.C. — a free press threatens the political aims of the powerful. We might still be small, but we can promise you that we exist solely for you, the people of D.C.Feb 4, 2026 19:21
- 5/ We have big ambitions: to be D.C.’s go-to source for local news, one that residents across the city feel represented by. But we can't do it alone — that’s where you come in.
- 6/ The Post has lost over 375,000 subscribers in just over a year. If 10% of those readers subscribed to The 51st instead, we could hire 10 reporters and five editors, dramatically scaling our coverage of the city at this critical time. 51st.news/signup
