‘Bloodbath’ on the Washington Post as roughly one-third of the employees is laid off by Jeff Bezos
The Washington Post told staffers today that it was moving forward with a sweeping round of layoffs that was part of a “broad strategic reset” of the storied newspaper, which will include eliminating the sports desk, severely cutting back on its international and restructuring its local news team.
Though it was not immediately known exactly how many employees will be impacted by the cuts, it had previously been reported that roughly 100 staffers from the newsroom could be laid off and as many as 300 employees from the broader company would face terminations.
However, after emails were sent to staffers on Wednesday morning, it is expected that roughly one-third of staff – about 800 employees in total – will be laid off, with some staffers saying that this was a “bloodbath” on Wednesday.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” the Post’s former executive editor Marty Baron said Wednesday. “The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”
The announcement, which was made by the Post’s executive editor Matt Murray on Wednesday morning, came after a “collective plea” from the newsroom to publicly urge the paper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos to reverse course on the expected downsizing. It would appear that the #SaveThePost campaign fell on deaf ears.
“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company. These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers,” the Washington Post said in a statement.
“The actions we are taking include a broad strategic reset with a significant staff reduction,” Murray declared during a morning call, adding that this was necessary to better position the paper for the years ahead.
“Today, the Washington Post is taking a number of actions across the company to secure our future,” he added.
During the call, Murray noted that the Post was getting rid of the publication’s sports team, which had long been an integral part of the paper, though he did say some members of the desk would remain in a new section covering the culture of sports.
Murray also revealed that the paper would be “shrinking” its foreign news bureaus and drastically altering its local coverage. The publication’s flagship podcast Post Reports will also be suspended amid this “strategic reset.”
Post employees were told that they would be receiving emails later in the morning telling them whether they were laid off or not, the paper’s human resources chief told the staff. He also noted that those impacted by the layoffs would receive benefits through mid-April.
After experiencing sustained growth under Bezos after he purchased the outlet over a decade ago, the Amazon founder has seen the Post lose money in recent years, leading to the paper looking to turn around its fortunes by shedding staff. Over 200 employees left via buyouts in 2023, followed by another round of buyouts last year amid a conservative shift of the opinion section to appeal to Donald Trump supporters.
The combination of the opinion page’s new right-leaning stance and Bezos spiking the editorial board’s planned 2024 presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris, however, also resulted in the paper losing hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers. The Blue Origin founder, who is one of the wealthiest men in the world, has been accused of cozying up to Trump, further eroding trust among left-leaning readers.
“Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump,” Glenn Kessler, the one-time fact-checker for the Post who took a buyout last year amid the latest staff exodus, wrote on his Substack this week.
Meanwhile, with rumors swirling in recent weeks that embattled Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis would be implementing brutal layoffs in an effort to push the paper to profitability this year, staffers began publicly appealing to Bezos to step in and halt the cuts.
In the end, the tech billionaire remained silent and never responded to the letters sent by the foreign news desk, local news team or the paper’s White House reporters. Bezos did however, make time to personally greet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – who booted Post reporters from the Pentagon last year – and show him around his Blue Origin factory this week.
“These layoffs are not inevitable,” the Washington Post Guild said in a statement. “A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future.”
The paper’s union added that if Bezos was “no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will.”
Some employees who found out that they were let go on Wednesday also sounded off publicly about the layoffs – and didn’t mince words.
“I’m among the hundreds of people laid off by The Post. This comes six months after hearing in a national meeting that race coverage drives subscriptions,” race and ethnicity reporter Emmanuel Felton tweeted. “This wasn’t a financial decision, it was an ideological one.”
The Post’s Amazon beat reporter Caroline O’Donovan also confirmed that she was “out, along with just a ton of the best in the biz. Horrible.”
“Laid off from the Washington Post, along with the entire roster of Middle East correspondents and our editors,” Cairo bureau chief Claire Parker added. “Hard to understand the logic. But I am grateful for my incredible colleagues, whose grit and dedication to the reporting and each other I will miss dearly.”
In her article about the layoffs at the Washington Post, former Post political reporter Ashley Parker wrote for The Atlantic that “we’re witnessing a murder” and Bezos and Lewis “are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special.”
Source: independent.co.uk
