The Washington Post (WaPo) laid off fully a third of its staff on Wednesday, eliminating its sports section entirely and paring down its foreign desk to bare bones, reports NewsBusters.
Reports of layoffs threatening the newsroom have been circling for months, and now over 300 journalist were let go. There was devastation among Post employees.
“To be part of the Washington Post Sports department was to be a part of an exemplary human experience, a rarefied collegiality, a beacon of collaboration and a near-bewildering scarcity of envy,” Chuck Culpepper, a member of the award-winning sports section, posted on X.
Foreign Desk reporter Lizzie Johnson got the news while overseas.
“I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone,” she wrote on X from Ukraine. “I have no words. I’m devastated.”
Curtis Houck of Media Research Center says the paper had been drowning in red ink for years.
“The Washington Post, like a lot of legacy media outlets, has been hemorrhaging money for years and what feels like decades now. They lost $77 million in 2023, and in 2024 some estimates have put it at $100 million,” informs Houck.
The Post had been struggling to adapt to the 21st century media landscape which brings an almost infinite amount of new sources and a premium on streaming and social media. However, Houck says the paper still has the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court in its back yard.
“The Washington Post was still formidable in its own right as the official newspaper of the most powerful city in the world,” states Houck.
The Washington Post has been owned by Jeff Bezos, the sometimes-richest man in the world, since 2013. While Houck says Bezos could have absorbed the millions of dollars of annual debt for years, that's not how he became wealthy.
“I'm not surprised at the scale of the changes. I just question whether it will right the ship or only further exacerbate its decline,” says Houck.
Houck says that, ultimately, the paper could not overcome its Trump Derangement Syndrome, a virus shared by the other east coast behemoth, the New York Times. Houck says that they could very well follow the WaPo off the front page and into the obituaries.
“This entirely has to do with its anti-Trump, anti-MAGA hatred,” concludes Houck.
