Washington Post Scraper

Extract full article details or the newest headlines from The Washington Post — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required
• Rich article detail: headline, byline with author bios, publish/update dates, section tags, topic keywords, and lead images
• Also fetches the newest headlines from any section (Politics, World, Business, and more) without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups

Note on paid articles: The Washington Post limits full article text to subscribers. This actor returns everything that's publicly visible — headline, summary, author, dates, tags, images, and the free preview paragraphs — but not the full body text of a metered article.

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode and pick a section.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads that section's headline feed and returns the newest stories.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/09/trump-picks-longtime-aide-will-scharf-new-top-white-house-lawyer/"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "section": "politics",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the newest headlines from a section.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
section	string	One of politics, national, world, business, entertainment, opinions, lifestyle, local. Used in latest mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. Default 10, max 12.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL (truncated here for readability; the real record includes the full topic-tag list and lead-image variants):

{
  "_input": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/09/trump-picks-longtime-aide-will-scharf-new-top-white-house-lawyer/",
  "_source": "S1-nextdata",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-10T06:48:52Z",
  "_id": "ZPMTJNKXZJDL5GVIGPT7GYXMYE",
  "canonical_url": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/09/trump-picks-longtime-aide-will-scharf-new-top-white-house-lawyer/",
  "headlines": { "basic": "Trump picks longtime aide Will Scharf as new top White House lawyer", "meta_title": "" },
  "description": "The White House staff secretary replaces David Warrington, who is leaving for the private sector.",
  "publish_date": "2026-08-09T23:19:35.338Z",
  "first_publish_date": "2026-08-09T23:19:35.338Z",
  "last_updated_date": "2026-08-09T23:19:35.464Z",
  "credits": {
    "by": [
      {
        "_id": "allisonn",
        "name": "Natalie Allison",
        "org": "Washington, D.C.",
        "description": "Natalie Allison is a White House reporter for the Washington Post...",
        "image": { "url": "https://author-service-images-prod-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub/washpost/8f83902d-7cf6-4522-84a9-3eb71b16a23a.png" }
      }
      /* ... 1 more author */
    ]
  },
  "content_elements": [
    { "type": "image", "...": "... lead image details" },
    { "type": "text", "content": "President Donald Trump has named Will Scharf as the next top White House lawyer..." }
    /* ... 1 more free-preview paragraph */
  ],
  "restricted": true,
  "content_restrictions": { "content_code": "default" },
  "taxonomy": { "...": "... full section/topic/keyword tree" }
  /* ... additional_properties, promo_items, websites, and other fields */
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline:

{
  "_input": "latest:politics",
  "_source": "S3-rss",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-10T06:48:19Z",
  "title": "Trump picks longtime aide Will Scharf as new top White House lawyer",
  "link": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/09/trump-picks-longtime-aide-will-scharf-new-top-white-house-lawyer/",
  "guid": "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/09/trump-picks-longtime-aide-will-scharf-new-top-white-house-lawyer/",
  "creator": "Natalie Allison, Dan Diamond",
  "pubDate": "Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:19:35 +0000",
  "description": "The White House staff secretary replaces David Warrington, who is leaving for the private sector.",
  "section": "politics"
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL or section you requested, for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record.
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
headlines.basic	string	Article headline (article mode).
title	string	Article headline (latest mode).
description	string	Article summary/dek.
credits.by	array	Authors, with bio and photo.
publish_date / first_publish_date / last_updated_date	string	Publication timestamps.
content_elements	array	The free-preview content blocks (text paragraphs and images) available without a subscription.
restricted	boolean	Whether the full article requires a subscription.
taxonomy	object	Section, topics, and keyword tags.
link / canonical_url	string	The article URL.

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed article).