The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced major job cuts and said a “painful” restructuring was needed at the legendary newspaper.
The newspaper, which achieved legendary status when its reporting helped bring down former US President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, will see “substantial” cuts to its newsroom, editor-in-chief Matt Murray said.
About a third of The Washington Post’s staff will be laid off, including more than 300 of the newsroom’s roughly 800 journalists, The New York Times reported. The Post did not disclose how many people it would lay off.
The Post’s downsizing comes as major traditional media outlets in the United States face intense pressure from President Donald Trump, who routinely denigrates journalists as “fake news” and has filed multiple lawsuits over reporting of his presidency.
Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, has become close to Trump during the Republican’s second term. His Amazon giant this year controversially paid Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, a reported $40 million for a documentary, along with another $35 million for marketing.
Murray said the shifts at the Post reflect the radically changing economics for the news media.
This “will help secure our future… and provide us with stability moving forward,” Murray said in a letter to employees.
He cited changes in the news ecosystem, from individuals “generating impact at low cost” to AI-generated content, as well as financial challenges that have already led to cost cuts and acquisitions at the Post.
“The structure of the company is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant local print product,” he says. “And while we produce a lot of excellent work, too often we wrote from one perspective, for one segment of the audience.”
On Facebook, Marty Baron, the Post’s editor-in-chief until 2021, wrote: “These are among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s largest news organizations.”
Sports reporters and international correspondents let loose
Most of the newspaper’s journalists abroad were fired, including its entire Middle East roster and its Kiev-based correspondent in Ukraine.
Sports, graphics and local news departments were sharply scaled back and the newspaper’s daily podcast, Post Reports, was suspended, local media reported.
Murray said the Post would now focus on politics, national security, technology, investigations and business, among other topics.
But a reporter who covered Amazon – currently valued at $3.7 trillion – was released.
“These layoffs are not inevitable. A newsroom cannot be gutted without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future,” the union that represents many Post journalists said in a statement.
It called on supporters of the newspaper, which was acquired by Bezos in 2013, to gather at its headquarters in Washington DC on Thursday at noon.
A One Post reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to Reuters, called the recently announced layoffs a “bloodbath.”
White House communications director Stephen Cheung reacted ridiculously to the news.
“Just a reminder that printing fake news is not a profitable business model,” he posted on X.
Loss of viewership after the decision on the 2024 election campaign
Baron, the Post’s former editor-in-chief, said Post owner Bezos had resisted Trump’s “brutal pressure” in the past but was beset by “ill-conceived decisions from the very top.”
Bezos blocked an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris days before the 2024 election — breaching the so-called firewall of editorial independence and a move seen as a genuflection to Trump.
In response, loyal readers ‘fled the Post. In reality, they were driven out,” Baron said.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that 250,000 digital subscribers left the Post after it refrained from endorsing Harris and that the paper lost about $100 million in 2024 as advertising and subscription revenue fell.
In May 2024, Post publisher Will Lewis told staff that the newspaper had lost $77 million in the past year and had lost half its audience since 2020.
In stark contrast, The New York Times announced on Wednesday that it has added more than one million digital subscribers by 2025, bringing its total to nearly 13 million and cementing its dominant position in the US media market.
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