The Washington Post hands its new podcasts to Acast

Five months after The Washington Post canceled Post Reports, its flagship daily news podcast, the paper is coming back to podcasts through Acast, with new audio and video shows fronted by columnists Carolyn Hax, Michelle Singletary and Shane O’Neill.

The Swedish podcast company Acast confirmed the partnership in its second-quarter interim report on July 23, 2026, naming the Post among the premium publishers that joined its network during the quarter. Trade reporting a few days later filled in the shape of the deal. It is a working example of where mid-sized publishers are heading when they can no longer afford an in-house audio department.

Acast’s quarter: revenue up 28% on almost flat listening

Acast’s Q2 2026 report is a regulatory filing, so the numbers in it are firm. The company posted net sales of SEK 775.6 million, up 28% year on year and 29% on an organic basis, with North America growing 34% and Europe 25%. Adjusted EBITDA came in at SEK 57.7 million, lifting the adjusted EBITDA margin to 7% from 3% a year earlier. Operating profit was SEK 31.6 million and operating cash flow SEK 50.1 million.

One pair of figures in that report matters more than the headline growth. Listens and views rose just 2%, to 1,120 million. Average revenue per listen or view rose 26%, to SEK 0.69. Acast’s growth comes from each listen being worth substantially more than it was a year ago, with the audience itself barely moving.

The report also names The Washington Post directly as a publisher partner added in the quarter, alongside The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast and The Comment Section with Drew Afualo.

Hax, Singletary and O’Neill front the Post’s new shows

Greg Glenday, Acast’s chief executive, commented in the report: “Acast delivered another quarter of strong growth in Q2 2026, as we continued to create even greater value for both advertisers and creators across our platform.”

According to trade coverage published on July 27, the partnership will launch with new audio and video shows fronted by Post journalists: syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax, personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary, and Style writer Shane O’Neill, author of the Seriously? pop culture newsletter. Acast Productions is developing and producing the shows. When they launch, Acast becomes the exclusive global partner for sales, distribution and monetization. Further audio and video involving Post Opinions writers, including Kate Andrews, Carine Hajjar, James Hohmann and Adam O’Neal, is reported to be in development.

Those show-level details come from trade reporting rather than a joint press release, and neither company has published a full announcement at the time of writing.

Why the Post is building around columnists

The choice of talent shows what the Post learned from Post Reports.

A daily news podcast is expensive in exactly the way a newspaper can least afford. It needs a standing team, it has to ship every weekday, and its audience arrives for the news rather than for anyone in particular. Cancel it and the audience disperses, because it came for the news and never belonged to the paper.

Hax, Singletary and O’Neill are the opposite proposition. Each already has a durable readership that follows the writer rather than the section. Advice, personal finance and pop culture also sell advertising more comfortably than hard news does, and they date slowly enough that a back catalog keeps earning. The Post is building around columnists it already pays, and it no longer has to staff a daily audio newsroom on top of the print one.

What changes for people who listen to Post podcasts

In the near term, very little changes for the shows you already follow. Acast distributes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and the rest, so nothing here pushes Post podcasts behind a single app.

Over a longer horizon it does change the mix. Daily news podcasts from newspapers have been thinning out for two years, The Daily and a handful of others aside; personality-led shows from those same newsrooms have held up. If the Post model works, expect more publishers to retire the daily briefing and reappear as a handful of named-host shows with an outside company selling the ads. Whether that feels like a loss depends on whether you were listening for the newspaper or for the person.

Video is part of the same calculation. Acast reported launching its first integrated video advertising campaigns on Apple Podcasts in May, with State Farm and T-Mobile as launch advertisers, and said more than 180 shows are now video-enabled with over 1,000 episodes published. The Post shows are described as audio and video from the start, which suits columnists: a familiar face works on camera far better than a rolling news bulletin.

Why Acast needs more publisher deals like this one

The following is our own reading, not confirmed by either company.

The interesting number in Acast’s quarter is that 2% listen growth. A company whose audience is flat but whose revenue per listen is up 26% has decided its growth will come from selling existing inventory better, and from signing publishers who bring audiences with them. We think that makes deals like the Post one a strategic necessity for Acast, and more of them are probably coming, most likely from regional and mid-sized publishers that cut audio staff in 2024 and 2025 and now want back in without rebuilding.

The risk sits with the publishers. Handing sales, distribution and monetization to one exclusive global partner is efficient, and it also makes a podcast business a line in someone else’s earnings report. For listeners the practical point is simpler: the new shows from Hax, Singletary and O’Neill will be distributed by Acast to the usual apps, so you will find them wherever you already listen.

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