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The Washington Post laid off its Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson while she was reporting from a warzone Wednesday, part of sweeping job cuts that eliminated approximately one-third of the company's workforce and decimated the newspaper's international coverage.
"I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated," Johnson wrote on social media shortly after receiving notice of her termination.
The layoff came with bitter irony for Johnson, who had posted just weeks earlier about the harsh conditions she endured to report from Kyiv. "Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.)," she wrote in the earlier post. "But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp. Despite how difficult this job can be, I am proud to be a foreign correspondent at The Washington Post."
Executive Editor Matt Murray confirmed the cuts would impact "nearly all news departments" in a memo to staff, with international bureaus bearing particularly heavy losses as the 150-year-old newspaper struggles with an estimated $100 million loss in 2024.
Johnson's layoff was part of a systematic dismantling of the Post's global reporting infrastructure. The cuts eliminated the Asia editor, bureau chiefs in New Delhi, Sydney and Cairo, the entire Middle East reporting team, and correspondents covering China, Iran and Turkiye, according to staff members and news reports.
Ukraine bureau chief Siobhan O'Grady, who also faced uncertainty about her position, had appealed directly to owner Jeff Bezos on social media in recent weeks. "We will never forget your support for our essential work documenting the war in Ukraine, which still rages," O'Grady wrote. "We risk our lives for the stories our readers demand. Please believe in us and #SaveThePost."
White House bureau chief Matt Viser had similarly tagged Bezos on social media, writing: "Our foreign colleagues are vital in shedding light on what is happening in the world. It's impossible to overstate how much we rely upon them and how diminished we'd be without them."
Those pleas went unheeded as publisher Will Lewis and Bezos, who purchased the Post in 2013, moved forward with a restructuring plan focusing resources on politics, national security, science, technology and business while sharply reducing international and other coverage areas.
The decision to lay off Johnson while she reported from an active conflict zone drew particular criticism as a symbol of American media's retreat from international coverage. One observer wrote on social media that the cuts represented "a depressing yet somehow perfect summation of our current moment" — that one of the most important newspapers in U.S. history no longer considers global reporting essential.
"The world is becoming less America-centric by the minute while the United States is becoming more America-centric than ever," the commentary continued.
Ashley Parker, a former Post correspondent who left for The Atlantic in late 2024, wrote that management failed to understand how international reporting strengthens domestic coverage. "The paper's coverage of Washington will be neither as vivid nor as authoritative without the contributions of journalists in bureaus around the world," Parker wrote in an opinion piece titled "The Murder of The Washington Post."
The cuts extended beyond international coverage. The Post eliminated most of its sports section, closed its books section, cancelled the daily "Post Reports" podcast, and made deep reductions to its metro desk covering the Washington region. Also among those laid off was Caroline O'Donovan, who covered Amazon — the company founded and chaired by Bezos.
Marty Baron, who served as executive editor from 2013 to 2021, called Wednesday's announcement "among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."
"The Washington Post's ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever," Baron said.
Baron attributed the financial crisis partly to decisions "from the very top," including Bezos and Lewis's choice to scrap a planned endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris over now-President Donald Trump shortly before the November 2024 election. That decision led to mass subscription cancellations and undermined the paper's financial position.
Several laid-off journalists suggested the cuts reflected ideological rather than purely financial motivations. Emmanuel Felton, a race and ethnicity reporter who lost his job, noted he had been told six months earlier that race coverage drives subscriptions. "This wasn't a financial decision, it was an ideological one," Felton wrote.
The Washington Post Guild, representing hundreds of newsroom employees, said the workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people over three years. "If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will," the union said.
Despite the Post's financial struggles, Bezos remains the fourth-richest person in the world with a net worth of approximately $260 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index. Some observers questioned whether his commitment to the Trump administration, including hosting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at his Blue Origin rocket company this week, influenced decisions about the paper's direction.
Murray told staff the restructuring would "help to secure our future in service of our journalistic mission," though many employees expressed skepticism. Sally Quinn, contributor and wife of late editor Ben Bradlee, told CNN: "If you don't have the great reporters, you don't have any good content, who's going to want to buy it?"
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