The embattled Washington Post began slashing newsroom staff Wednesday, eliminating its sports department and shrinking its local and international desks amid a sharp loss of subscribers under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.
Executive Editor Matt Murray informed employees about the sweeping cuts in a Zoom meeting, according to multiple reports, after weeks of speculation and rising concern among staffers who launched a #SavethePost campaign ahead of the announcement.
The layoffs are expected to hit one-third of the newspaper’s entire staff as The Post shutters its books department and suspends its “Post Reports” podcast, shifting the focus to national and political coverage.
“The actions we are taking include a broad strategic reset with a significant staff reduction,” Mr. Murray said at the private meeting, as reported by the New York Times. “The company is also making broad cuts on the business side.”
The Washington Post Guild, the union representing employees, said the cuts come on top of the roughly 400 jobs that have been eliminated over the last three years.
The guild, which plans to hold a rally at noon Thursday, called on Mr. Bezos to sell the paper if he is “no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism.”
“Now is the time to stand in solidarity with our laid-off colleagues and with those who remain, who will now be asked to do more with less,” the guild said Wednesday in a statement. “There is still time to save The Post.”
Restoring the paper’s financial fortunes will require some deep pockets. The Post lost $77 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The 147-year-old newspaper’s struggle for profitability is a familiar one, a microcosm of the saga playing out across the journalism industry as news organizations compete for an increasingly fractured online readership.
Compounding The Post’s problems was a leftist reader revolt that began after the newspaper under Mr. Bezos scrapped plans to endorse 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, framing the decision as a return to its pre-1976 policy of not backing White House candidates.
Thousands more subscribers abandoned The Post after Mr. Bezos announced in February 2025 that the hard-left opinion page would move to the right by focusing on “personal liberties and free markets.”
The newspaper also rolled out a new mission statement, “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” although Mr. Bezos also kept the anti-Trump masthead slogan adopted in 2017, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Dozens of reporters and editors jumped ship rather than work under the more centrist regime, drawing comparisons to The Post’s chief competitor, The New York Times, which has thrived as it continues to cater to its left-wing base and draw new readers with its popular games and cooking sections.
Newly dismissed reporters and editors began posting their farewells on social media after receiving pink slips via email.
“After nearly 38 years, my time at The Washington Post is done,” former NFL reporter Mark Maske posted on X. “Obviously it was not particularly surprising to hear that news today, given all that led up to it. But it was still jarring to be without the job that I’d had for my entire adult life.”
Sports columnist Candace Buckner posted: “I guess democracy has died, y’all. Well, at least the greatest sports section in all the land has.”
The National Press Club called the layoffs “a devastating setback for the scores of individual journalists affected and for the journalism profession.”
“The emptying of newsrooms erodes the public’s right to know,” NPC President Mark Schoeff said in a statement. “Every lost reporting job is one fewer set of eyes watching institutions that affect people’s daily lives.”
• Liam Griffin contributed to this story, which is based in part on wire service reports.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.