People (usually out of self-interest) saying "Don't cancel your WaPo/LATimes subscription, it doesn't hurt the owner, it only hurts the people who work there" are possibly sincere but also totally wrong.
In the first place, it *does* hurt the owner. When subscriptions fall, advertisers back off and buy less space, because it's no longer worth as much to them. When advertisers back off, the paper stops being profitable.
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And when the paper stops being profitable, it starts being a liability to the owner. And it doesn't have to zero out the owner's net worth to make his ownership no longer worth it. If it becomes enough of a drag, he'll start to look for buyers to take it off his hands OR he'll realize that he made a mistake and he needs to rectify that mistake.
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But it's also the case that people buy a paper, not to support a jobs program for hard-to-employ journalists, but because they want reliable news and honest opinion.
And if the newspaper owners starts to interfere with journalism to the extent that the quality of news and opinion is affected, or at least cannot be guaranteed, each subscriber should be asking whether the price of subscription is still worth what they're getting.
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If you subscribed to a paper expecting a quality journalistic product, and the owner says "Oh, we're no longer selling what you paid for, have some pablum and drivel instead," you have every right to unsubscribe, just as the owner has the right to now market it to people who prefer pablum and drivel. And the reporters and editors have to decide if that's what they want to be associated with.
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During the 2017-2021 Trump Administration, there were a number of people who worked for that administration who said "I don't support everything that goes on here, but I have to stay because somebody sane has to keep the shop running"; a position not without merit, but to be set against the fact that their very reputability acts as whitewash for malfeasance and crime.
Those reporters who criticized that position should ask themselves if they're not now doing the same thing.
@DavidSalo Is it possible that there is a revolution in the news industry in the works? People are already turning to independent news sources like writers on substack, podcasters and YouTube. (Even CoSo!) The shift away from corporate controlled news organizations is already underway. WaPo and the LAT have just accelerated it.