Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos attend Haute Couture Week in Paris. (Photo by Anthony Ghnassia/Getty Images for Christian Dior)
On Monday, as celebrities and elites gathered in Paris, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez helped kick off Haute Couture Week, attending a pair of luxury fashion shows for high-end designers Schiaparelli and Dior. Bumping shoulders with the likes of Anna Wintour, the Amazon billionaire and his former journalist wife hit the red carpet, posing for cameras and smiling as if all were well in their empire.
Meanwhile, back across the Atlantic in Washington, reality stood in stark contrast to the glossy image Bezos and Sánchez projected in front of cameras. Inside The Washington Post, staffers are bracing for yet another round of brutal layoffs, with morale sinking to a nadir, according to more than a half-dozen staffers and insiders I spoke to on Monday. “I’ve never experienced such a feeling of dread,” one Postie told Status, capturing the depressing—and prevailing—sentiment on K Street.
As Status first reported, layoffs are expected to hit the Will Lewis–led newspaper in February after its leadership delayed the plan by several months. Upwards of 100 newsroom layoffs are expected, with the sports, metro, and foreign desks likely to be hit the hardest. As many as 300 Post employees across the broader company could ultimately be impacted, making the cuts among the most devastating in the storied newspaper’s history.
Editors, meanwhile, have quietly told some top reporters…
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