City Cast Moves To Plug DC News Gaps Left By Washington Post Cuts.

Graham Holdings, the company that previously owned the Washington Post, is stepping up its coverage of the DC metro area following last week’s firing of a third of the newspaper’s staff last week by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Only this time, Graham will do it via podcasting. City Casts, the network of daily local news podcasts and newsletters, has announced it will size up and expand its efforts in the Washington area to fill the gap left by the Post layoffs.

“City Cast is going to immediately and significantly expand our local DC newsroom, to help fill the void the Post is leaving,” Plotz says. “City Cast’s parent company, the Graham Holdings Company, knows from its own longtime stewardship of the Washington Post how important local media is to a city’s well-being. Graham Holdings is continuing its commitment to the region by supporting City Cast’s expansion.” Graham sold the Washington Post to Bezos in 2013.

In a post on social media, Plotz says that City Cast plans to initially hire four journalists to start immediately, writing that “City Cast DC” has already attracted tens of thousands of listeners and readers in the Washington area.

“My neighbors and I deserve great local journalism that holds mayors, and sports team owners, and police chiefs to account; that revels in what’s wonderful about the DMV and exposes what’s broken about it. Serving and informing the community helps make our institutions better and makes us all feel a little more connected. I also believe it’s possible to have a local news product that does all that, and is a sustainable business,” Plotz says. “We’re going to do a lot more, because DC needs it.”

The Washington Post last week cut a third of its staff and canceled its flagship “Post Reports” podcast as part of a series of deep cuts at the venerable news brand. For now, its daily morning news series “The Seven” remains in production.

City Cast Chief Creative Officer Andi McDaniel says the work they have seen by their “City Cast Twin Cities” team in Minneapolis-St. Paul in recent months has shown the need for local journalism, adding in her own LinkedIn message that what has happened at the Washington Post raises questions of whether a similar crisis occurred in the DC metro area whether there would be any local journalists on the group to tell the story. “The nation’s capital is now less prepared to face a crisis, or for that matter — an ordinary local election,” McDaniel says.

The four-year-old City Cast today operates in 13 cities, including Austin; Boise, ID; Chicago, Denver; Houston; Las Vegas; Madison, WI; Nashville; Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City; and Washington. It has about 240,000 monthly podcast listeners and 500,000 newsletter subscribers. It exited the Houston and Boise, ID markets late last year, finding Boise too small a market to support its business model, while Houston was too big and sprawling a metro area for its small team to cover.

While Graham Holdings says City Cast remains unprofitable, the company reported that in the third quarter it posted year-over-year growth. Plotz told Adweek in November that City Cast was on track to have to $4 million to $6 million of revenue in 2025, double its 2024 results. That comes from a mix of advertising and subscription sales. City Cast is said to have about 5,000 subscribers — or “neighbors,” as they refer to them — who pay $10 per month or $100 per year for ad-free content.