New York: The Washington Post told employees Wednesday that it will begin sweeping layoffs, the latest blow to the storied newspaper under billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, confirming weeks of speculation about drastic newsroom cuts.
“We have grappled with financial challenges for some time. They have affected us in multiple rounds of cost cuts and buyouts, along with periodic constraints on other kinds of spending,” The Post’s Executive Editor Matt Murray said in a newsroom note seen by POLITICO, stating that the reductions would impact “nearly all news departments.”
The size and scope of the layoffs are not immediately clear. But hundreds of Post employees could lose their jobs, according to Post reporters, with sections including sports, metro, books and international coverage hit particularly hard.
The latest round of layoffs caps a tumultuous 18 months for The Post, which Bezos purchased in 2013. The newspaper has undergone significant leadership changes and was roiled by a decision from Bezos and publisher Will Lewis to scrap a planned editorial that would have endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris over now-President Donald Trump shortly before the November 2024 election.
The decision led to several resignations in the opinions section and a reader revolt. It preceded a makeover of the newspaper’s opinions desk, which Bezos said he reformed to focus on ‘personal liberties and free markets.’ And in early 2025, the paper offered buyouts to much of its staff, which saw several top stars decamp to competing publications.
Murray’s note to the newsroom said the paper will “concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact,” naming sections like politics, national security, science, technology, and business.
He also noted areas where he felt coverage fell short: “Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years.” He continued: “And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”
Among the layoffs was The Post’s Amazon beat reporter, Caroline O’Donovan. Bezos, the Post’s owner, is the founder and chair of Amazon.
Post reporters and alumni slammed the move as gutting the capital’s paper of record.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” said Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Post. “The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”
Baron, who oversaw the newsroom’s transition into Bezos’ leadership, said the move was “made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top.”
A Post spokesperson said in a statement that the paper “is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company. 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.”
The layoffs come as The Post continues to face significant financial struggles. The outlet lost an estimated $100 million in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal, adding pressure on management to rein in costs.
“In just the last three years, The Post’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people,” The Washington Post Guild, a union that represents some of the paper’s journalists, said in a statement Wednesday. “If Jeff Bezos 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, then The Post deserves a steward that will.”
Several Democratic members of Congress also voiced their outrage over the sweeping cuts, calling out Bezos for Amazon’s recent multi-million dollar investment into the “Melania” documentary while proceeding to gut the paper.
“Bezos just spent $40M sucking up to Trump with Amazon’s ‘Melania’, but is now cutting a third of [Washington Post] staff – including much of the international & local teams – for ‘budget’ reasons?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote on X. “The corporate takeover of media is a threat to our democracy & the delivery of the truth to the American people.”
Concern over the cuts spilled into public view for weeks, with Post journalists and former staffers rallying on social media under the hashtag #SaveThePost, sending pleas to Bezos to save the paper.
“Hi @JeffBezos. We will never forget your support for our essential work documenting the war in Ukraine, which still rages,” Siobhán O’Grady, the Post’s Ukraine bureau chief, wrote on X. “We risk our lives for the stories our readers demand. Please believe in #SaveThePost.”
“Our foreign colleagues are vital in shedding light on what is happening in the world,” wrote Matt Viser, White House bureau chief for The Post, tagging Bezos directly on X. “It’s impossible to overstate how much we rely upon them and how diminished we’d be without them. #SaveThePost.”
Former Post correspondent Ashley Parker, who was among the several high-profile Post reporters to decamp to The Atlantic over the last year, described the cuts as existential to the outlet’s future in an article titled “The Murder of The Washington Post.”
“What Bezos, [publisher Will] Lewis, and their jargon-loving underlings also fail to understand is that the paper’s coverage of Washington will be neither as vivid nor as authoritative without the contributions of journalists in bureaus around the world,” she wrote, adding: “And as I watch the deliberate dismantling of the paper of the Graham family, of Woodward and Bernstein, of Marty Baron, of so many of my best friends, my grief is still visceral, my anger still raw.”
