Washington Post has always been very strong covering US Politics in DC. That’s probably what drives subscribers more than anything. Reporters there have a lot of access to decision makers in Congress, White House, etc
A lot of that trust in WaPo is gone now and moved onto Politico and NY Times.
It's not a 0 or a 1. They had more staff doing it, now they have less. That means they now do 0.2, which is not 0 as you're implying, but it's still significantly worse than back when it was 1.
You should probably read about the cuts we're talking about, then. From the OP:
> The metro staff, already cut to about forty staffers during the past five years, has been shrunk to about twelve