Washington Post abandons newsroom integration for its social media-focused ‘WP Ventures’ division

The Washington Post informed staffers on Tuesday that the paper’s “third newsroom,” dubbed WP Ventures, would undergo significant changes.

The Post last year announced a vague plan to introduce a “third newsroom” that was separate from both the paper’s traditional news and opinion sections and appealed to social media users. Less than a year after its launch, Krissah Thompson, who was running WP Ventures, took the Post’s latest voluntary separation package and will exit the company at the end of the month. 

Thompson’s exit coincides with the “next iteration of WP Ventures,” which will be completely separated from the paper’s newsroom because “the industry has shifted.” 

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“A year ago, we set out to understand and respond to the evolving dynamics of news, specifically off-platform and within the creator space. We formally launched WP Ventures in January, with a focus on reach, relevance, and revenue: expanding our presence on social media and creating new commercial opportunities, especially for consumer and lifestyle journalism. Even as we have pursued that effort, the industry has shifted,” WP Ventures general manager Samantha Henig wrote to staffers in a joint memo alongside Thompson. 

The memo, which has been obtained by Fox News Digital, insists the project “was always intended for continuous evolution and has always been experimental.”

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“It’s become clear that in order to most effectively operate in this new environment, we should double down on the original premise of creating a third space alongside — but outside — the newsroom and Opinion. So the next iteration of WP Ventures will be developed apart from The Post newsroom,” Henig and Thompson wrote. 

Chief Strategy Officer Suzi Watford will now oversee WP Ventures.

“Going forward, we will focus entirely on building personality-driven content and franchises around personalities in topic areas that are of interest to our target audience of Confident Strivers, and with strong commercial opportunities. This could include audio, video, newsletters, and events. We will responsibly embrace AI to tell and promote stories in new ways and at scale on new platforms,” Henig and Thompson wrote. 

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The memo concluded: “Not all of Ventures will be making this move. The teams that are deeply tied to the newsroom will remain in the newsroom. We will be meeting with all teams over the coming days to discuss the transition plan after Krissah’s departure. And we will have more details on what this next phase and this new team look like in the coming weeks and months.” 

The changes to WP Ventures come as the Post has faced an unprecedented exodus of its top talent, low morale and wholesale changes to the Opinion section.