Washington Post Cuts A Third Of Its Staff In A Blow To A Legendary News Brand

 

The Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff Wednesday, eliminating its sports section, several foreign bureaus and its books coverage in a widespread purge that represented a brutal blow to journalism and one of its most legendary brands.

The Post's executive editor, Matt Murray, called the move painful but necessary to put the outlet on a stronger footing and to weather changes in technology and user habits. “We can't be everything to everyone,” Murray said in a note to staff members.

He outlined the changes in a companywide online meeting, and staff members then began getting emails with one of two subject lines — telling them their role was or was not eliminated.

 

Rumors of layoffs had circulated for weeks, ever since word leaked that sports reporters who had expected to travel to Italy for the Winter Olympics would not be going. But when official word came down, the size and scale of the cuts were shocking, affecting virtually every department in the newsroom.

“It's just devastating news for anyone who cares about journalism in America and, in fact, the world,” said Margaret Sullivan, a Columbia University journalism professor and former media columnist at the Post and The New York Times. “The Washington Post has been so important in so many ways, in news coverage, sports and cultural coverage.”

 

Martin Baron, the Post's first editor under its current owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, condemned his former boss and called what has happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the layoffs “part of a broader reprehensible pattern in which corporate decisions are hollowing out newsrooms across the country.”

In an speech to members of the Washington Press Club Foundation, Pelosi said: “A free press cannot fulfill its mission if it is starved of the resources it needs to survive. And when the newsrooms are weakened, our republic is weakened.”

 

Washington Post employees, including Ishaan Tharoor, son of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, shared heartfelt messages on social media. In a post on X, Ishaan Tharoor said he was "heartbroken" over being laid off and expressed solidarity with his peers who faced the same fate.

"I have been laid off today from the Washington Post, along with most of the International staff and so many other wonderful colleagues. I'm heartbroken for our newsroom and especially for the peerless journalists who served the Post internationally--editors and correspondents who have been my friends and collaborators for almost 12 years. It's been an honour to work with them," he said in his post.

 

Tharoor also stated that launching the WorldView column in 2017 to help readers understand global affairs had been an honour, thanking the half a million loyal subscribers who followed his work. "A bad day," Tharoor stated in a separate post, sharing a picture of an empty newsroom.

Bezos, who has been silent in recent weeks amid pleas from Post journalists to step in and prevent the cutbacks, had no immediate comment.

 

The newspaper has been bleeding subscribers in part due to decisions made by Bezos, including pulling back from an endorsement of Kamala Harris, a Democrat, during the 2024 presidential election against Donald Trump, a Republican, and directing a more conservative turn on liberal opinion pages. A private company, the Post does not reveal how many subscribers it has, but it is believed to be roughly 2 million. The Post would also not say how many people it has on staff, making it impossible to estimate how many people were laid off Wednesday. The Post also did not outline its finances. The Post’s troubles stand in contrast to its longtime competitor The New York Times, which has been thriving in recent years, in large part due to investments in ancillary products such as games and its Wirecutter product recommendations. The Times has doubled its staff over the past decade.

Eliminating the sports section puts an end to a department that has hosted many well-known bylines through the years, among them John Feinstein, Michael Wilbon, Shirley Povich, Sally Jenkins and Tony Kornheiser.