‘Bloodbath in newsroom’: Bezos-owned Washington Post launches sweeping layoffs

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has begun a sweeping round of layoffs that will eliminate roughly one in three newsroom jobs, marking one of the most severe workforce reductions in the paper’s history.

Staff were informed on Wednesday that the cuts are part of what management described as a “broad strategic reset,” a move that will shutter entire departments, sharply reduce international coverage, and significantly restructure local and editorial operations.

Emails sent to employees on Wednesday morning indicated that about 300 of The Post’s roughly 800 journalists are expected to lose their jobs. Several staffers described the scale of the cuts as a “bloodbath.”

Employees were told they would be notified individually of their status and that those laid off would receive benefits through mid-April.

“These moves are painful,” Executive Editor Matt Murray said during a staff-wide call. “This is a tough day.”

Entire sections dismantled

According to Murray, the paper’s sports department and books section will be closed, while the flagship podcast Post Reports will be suspended. The number of editors will be “significantly reduced,” art teams will be merged, and the metro desk will be restructured.

The Post’s foreign bureaus will be “shrunk,” though Murray said the outlet would maintain a limited overseas presence focused on “national security.” Some sports reporters will be reassigned to features coverage.

“We can’t be everything to everyone,” Murray told staff. “But we must be indispensable where we compete.”

Bezos silent as pleas from newsroom go unanswered

The announcement came after a collective appeal from newsroom staff urging Bezos to intervene and halt the expected downsizing. Those appeals went unanswered.

Bezos, who purchased the newspaper in 2013, did not publicly address the layoffs. Staffers noted that he did not respond to letters from the foreign desk, metro reporters, or White House correspondents calling for his involvement.

‘One of the darkest days’

Former executive editor Marty Baron placed responsibility squarely on ownership, calling the layoffs “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

“The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished,” Baron said, adding that readers would be denied “ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world.”

Newsroom sources cited Bezos’s decision to pull the editorial board’s planned 2024 presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris as a major turning point. In the days that followed, more than 250,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions, according to staff accounts.

The shift in the opinion section’s direction, along with Bezos’s role in reshaping it, was also cited by former and current staff as accelerating the paper’s financial difficulties.

‘Surviving Trump’

“Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump,” former Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote on his Substack.

Journalists confirmed departures across multiple desks and regions, including West Asia, Ukraine, race and ethnicity, and the Amazon beat. Cairo bureau chief Claire Parker said the entire West Asia reporting team had been laid off.

Others described the process as psychologically draining, with weeks of rumors and uncertainty preceding the final notifications.

“The feeling in the newsroom is that the way they’ve handled this is like some kind of sick psychological warfare,” one staffer said.

The Washington Post Guild warned that the layoffs would have long-term consequences for credibility and public trust, arguing that the newsroom was being hollowed out rather than reoriented.

“These layoffs are not inevitable,” the union said, adding that if Bezos was no longer willing to invest in the paper’s mission, “then The Post deserves a steward that will.”

The National Press Club also criticized the cuts, saying the “emptying of newsrooms erodes the public’s right to know” and weakens accountability.

As the layoffs moved forward, Murray told staff that leadership remained committed to high-quality journalism and said he was confident the paper could rebuild once it reached “sounder footing.”

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