Jeff Bezos' Washington Post guts a third of its staff

Among the sections most affected are the paper’s books section, which will be completely shuttered, as will its sports section, though the Times reports that some sports reporters will move to the features desk to cover the “culture of sports.” The Post will also significantly diminish its metro and international news sections, with editors and reporters laid off in the Middle East, India, and Australia. The international section editor, Peter Finn, reportedly asked to be included in the layoffs rather than select who from the section would be cut. “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,” a Post spokesperson told the Associated Press. 

The Post has fallen victim to some of the issues that have affected nearly every outlet in the past few years. The Times reports that AI overviews in search engines have halved the traffic that the Post could rely upon from search. However, there have also been multiple unforced errors on the part of the paper’s management. Perhaps most notable was Bezos’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Then there was the decree last February that the paper’s opinion section needed to only focus on “personal liberties and free market” and that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” That move prompted a reported 75,000 cancellations, which came on the heels of losing about 300,000 subscribers from the refusal to endorse a candidate. Claimed executive editor Matt Murray in an email to the Times, “Even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.” From where we’re sitting, it seems like trying to court a different kind of audience alienated a significant part of the audience that actually paid for the Post‘s work, and that the journalists will bear the brunt of this decisionmaking.