Post Parting Depression

In the spring of 2016, two years after Jeff Bezos acquired The Washington Post, the billionaire joined then-executive editor Marty Baron for an interview. During the sit-down, Bezos declared he was “even more optimistic today” about the newspaper's future than he was when he bought it. “I’ve always believed…that democracy dies in darkness,” Bezos said, using The Post’s signature slogan, adding that “certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light.”

Nearly a decade later, staffers at The Post are questioning Bezos and publisher Will Lewis’ commitment to the health of the paper—and publicly pleading for them to change course—as they brace for upwards of 100 newsroom layoffs that are expected to hit the sports, metro and foreign teams hardest, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. As of August, the newsroom headcount sat around 800 staffers. Including those anticipated newsroom cuts, as many as 300 Post employees across the broader company could be impacted by the February trim-down, Status has learned.

Spokespersons for The Post did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

“The newsroom is being punished for absolute incompetence from the owner and publisher,” one Post staffer said.

It is a particularly inopportune time for Post leadership to enact broad cuts to the sports desk, which could be shuttered entirely, according to multiple people familiar with the plans, with the start of the Winter Olympics just weeks away. On Friday, managing editor Kimi Yoshino startled sports staffers with a memo informing them that the paper would no longer send a cohort of journalists to Italy to cover the games, according to a copy of the email reviewed by Status. “We realize this decision and its timing will be disappointing to many of you, so please reach out to me if you want to talk further,” Yoshino wrote in the brief note.

Further rankling staff, much of the expense associated with covering the Olympics had already been paid prior to the reversal, according to two people familiar with the matter. The New York Times reported on Saturday that The Post had spent at least $80,000 on housing alone. If anything, that appears to be flushing money down the drain rather than effective cost-cutting. One Post staffer said the cancellation served as a “devastating blow” for the sports team, and is being read internally as a decision by leadership to avoid the poor optics of laying off staffers while they are on a reporting assignment abroad. As Status first reported last week, the layoffs are expected to take place in February. The Olympic Games are scheduled for February 6-22.

As the sports team awaits its fate, the department is in “a state of paralysis,” the staffer said, at least “until it gets some clarity from management.” The person added to Status, “I’m done producing journalism for The Washington Post until I learn if I still have a job. I think a lot of people feel that way.”

While Post leadership signals a move away from sending journalists abroad to cover major sporting events, the paper’s foreign journalists now fear they are next. Multiple people familiar with the matter said The Post is planning to shutter a majority of the paper’s international bureaus, dramatically reducing the number of reporters stationed abroad.

The newspaper had invested heavily in international reporting under Bezos’ ownership, including a global expansion initiative in 2020 when The Post opened hubs in London and Seoul, adding 44 journalists to the newsroom staff. Spokespersons for The Post and Bezos did not respond to multiple requests for comment on how the paper’s priorities have changed since then.

Internally, the prospect of significant cuts has sent shockwaves through the foreign desk, with 60 Post journalists penning a “collective plea” to Bezos, urging him to “preserve our newspaper’s global coverage,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Status. “Cutting this deeply sourced, battle-hardened and tireless staff would hinder The Post’s ability to respond to the biggest news developments on the horizon,” read the note, highlighting the team’s recent coverage of Nicolás Maduro’s capture, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Iran-Israel conflict, and much more. The group acknowledged they are “endlessly grateful” for Bezos’ investment in the newspaper, and conceded that they are willing to find ways to “reduce our costs even further,” while retaining as much of the workforce as possible.

To underscore their point, the last-ditch effort to persuade Bezos to view The Post with the same optimism and commitment he publicly espoused at the time of his purchase, invoked his own words from his first town hall, when he warned staff: “You can be profitable and shrinking. And that’s a survival strategy, but it ultimately leads to irrelevance, at best. And at worst, it leads to extinction.”

The dozens of Post staffers concluded: “We urge you to consider how the proposed layoffs will certainly lead us first to irrelevance and later extinction—not the shared success that remains attainable.”

Alas, the coming cuts at the storied newspaper are merely the latest blow to an institution that has been battered by editorial departures since buyouts were first offered in 2023. Yet despite the steady loss of personnel and institutional knowledge, Bezos has shown little interest in stopping the bleeding. And some of that bleeding was self-inflicted. Bezos’ moves—including the late decision to kill a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris and to reorient the opinion pages around “personal liberties and free markets” after Donald Trump’s return to power—have sparked a crisis at the newspaper, alienating both the newsroom and subscribers and resulting in more than 300,000 cancellations.

Now, staffers are left waiting anxiously for whether Bezos will respond to their plea at all. In the meantime, the drawn-out timeline has only depleted morale further inside the K Street building. Several employees told Status they are struggling to understand why leadership would wait until February to carry out layoffs that now feel inevitable, arguing that the prolonged uncertainty has become its own form of torture.

That limbo has generated a more existential question: what exactly is Bezos’ plan for The Post? As the workforce continues to shrink, some in the newsroom are wondering whether the end goal is even to future-proof the institution, or simply slim it down into a more marketable asset.

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