Jeff Bezos. (Photo by Stefano Guidi/Getty Images)
On Wednesday morning, staffers at The Washington Post were jolted awake by a 6 a.m. email from Executive Editor Matt Murray and the head of human resources, instructing them to stay home for a Zoom meeting to announce “some significant actions across the company today.” The message confirmed what many at the Jeff Bezos-owned news organization had feared for months: the mass layoffs long anticipated since the fall had finally arrived.
During the 8:30 a.m. all-staff call, Murray detailed a “broad strategic reset” at the newspaper that he said would result in a “significant staff reduction.” Murray, The Post’s top editor, delivered the news alone to the legion of staffers watching at home on their computers, many nervously waiting to learn whether they would survive the cuts.
The sweeping cuts to the storied publication, which impacted one-third of the workforce, hit nearly all news departments on some level, with some sections reduced so heavily that they were effectively shuttered, Status has learned. Among those hardest hit: The sports department was closed, with most of its roughly 45 staffers laid off. The international desk, with reporters deployed to war zones and hot spots around the world, was gutted. The 40-person metro desk was decimated. The Post also closed its books section and suspended the “Post Reports” podcast. All of the paper’s staff photographers were laid off, as well as the majority of the video team. Elsewhere across the newsroom, the team tasked with covering the technology industry was hollowed out, eliminating some three-quarters of the 20-person desk, including most of the San Francisco bureau, and notably, The Post’s Amazon beat reporter.
“It's biblically bad,” one Post journalist told Status, adding, “It will be a miracle if they can put out a paper tomorrow because no one is working." Another staffer called it a “death knell,” while a senior editor described the layoffs as…
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