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The Washington Post is laying off one-third of its staff in the newsroom and other departments, a brutal blow to one of journalism’s legendary brands.
The troubled Post began implementing large-scale cutbacks on Wednesday, including eliminating its sports department and shrinking the number of journalists it stations overseas. The changes were announced by executive editor Matt Murray in a Zoom meeting with staff.
The staff reduction is a significant psychic blow at the Post, known in history books for its Watergate revelations and most recently for aggressive coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cutbacks to the federal workforce, and for journalism in general.
“It’s an inconceivable transformation of our newsroom. I don’t know how we are going to go back to work and try to cover this moment in America and the world without them,” said Sarah Kaplan, a steward for the Washington Post Guild who reports for the paper’s climate section.
“I don’t think that any of us anticipated that it was going to be this bad…. Every single notification that I received was a gut punch.”
Staff members in the newsroom were told they would be getting emails with one of two subject lines, announcing that the person’s role has or hasn’t been eliminated. A Post representative confirmed that one-third of the staff would be cut, without saying how many total employees the newspaper has.
The newspaper’s books department will be closed, and its Washington-area news department and editing staff will be restructured, Murray told staff members. Its Post Reports podcast will be suspended.
Murray acknowledged the cuts will be a shock to the system but said the goal is to create a Post that can grow and thrive again.
“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,” a Post spokesperson said in a statement.
“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.”
Moves expected for weeks
A private company, the Post does not reveal how many subscribers it has, although the number is believed to be about two million.
The moves were expected for several weeks, since word leaked out that the Post had told its sports staffers who had arranged to cover the Winter Olympics in Italy that they would not be going. After it became public, the Post reversed course and said it would be sending a limited staff.
The layoffs announced Wednesday include a broad range of journalists, from local reporters covering recent winter storms to foreign correspondents who remain in active war zones like Ukraine, according to Kaplan.
“The thing that really gets me is that we live in this moment where, because of AI and misinformation, it’s so difficult to know what’s true,” she said. “It’s difficult to know who you can trust, and … a Washington Post reporter could always say, ‘I was there. I saw it firsthand.'”
By reducing the number of reporters, editors and other staff who support this reporting, “we are leaving people without that beacon of light in a really dark and scary and confusing moment,” Kaplan said.
“I feel sick thinking about what the implications are going to be.”
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 like its Games site and Wirecutter product recommendations. The Times has doubled its staff over the past decade.
In recent weeks, many Post staff members have been appealing directly to the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The newspaper has been bleeding subscribers in part, some staff argue, due to decisions made by him — such as pulling back from an endorsement of Kamala Harris, a Democrat, during the 2024 presidential election against Trump, a Republican, and directing a more conservative turn on liberal opinion pages.
The Washington Post Guild, the union for staff members, had appealed to the public to send a message to Bezos: “Enough is enough. Without the staff of The Washington Post, there is no Washington Post.”