Washington Post Cuts Nearly One-Third of Workforce Amid Financial Struggles

The Washington Post has laid off nearly one-third of its workforce, affecting more than 300 employees, including journalists, according to people familiar with the matter. The newspaper employs about 800 journalists in total. Many staff members were notified on Wednesday, local time, and instructed to stay home.

The New York Times, citing two internal sources, reported that approximately 30 percent of the company’s employees were laid off. The cuts span business operations as well as the newsroom, raising concerns that several beats and operations may be shut down or significantly scaled back.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has owned The Washington Post since 2013, expanded the paper during his first eight years of ownership. However, the organization has struggled in recent years and has yet to find a consistently profitable model for running a digital-first news operation.

Executive Editor Matt Murray told newsroom staff during a conference call on Wednesday that the company has been losing significant amounts of money for an extended period and has failed to adequately meet audience demands. He said all departments would be affected by the cuts, with the paper shifting its focus toward national news, politics, business, and health coverage, while reducing emphasis on other areas.

“Today is largely about strengthening our position so that we can become more essential to people’s lives in an increasingly competitive and complex media environment,” Murray said, acknowledging that the Post has faced “real struggles” in recent years.

Murray noted that the organization had been overly attached to an older media model. Once a dominant local print product, The Washington Post has seen its online search traffic decline by nearly half over the past three years, partly due to the rise of generative artificial intelligence. Daily story output has also dropped significantly over the past five years.

In an interview on Wednesday, Murray said the Post could potentially expand its newsroom again in the future.

According to the New York Post, the newspaper’s sports department will be shut down, though some reporters will remain and move to the features section to cover sports culture. The metro desk will be reduced, the book section will be closed, and the daily news podcast will be discontinued.

International coverage will also be scaled back. While journalists will remain in about a dozen locations, correspondents and editors based in the Middle East, India, and Australia have been laid off. Murray said he takes responsibility for the layoffs, calling them part of a strategic plan developed by him and his leadership team.

Some of the layoffs have drawn criticism, including the dismissal of a Ukraine correspondent who was working in a war zone. All staff photographers were also laid off. One sports journalist covering the Winter Olympics in Italy said he would continue filing reports even after being terminated.

In late 2023, Bezos appointed Will Lewis as publisher in an effort to return the Post to profitability amid declining readership and subscriptions. Lewis has tested several changes, including the use of artificial intelligence for opinion content, podcasts, and news aggregation. The announcement of the layoffs followed these initiatives.