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The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced sweeping job cuts Wednesday, saying a “painful” restructuring is needed to stabilize the storied newspaper as it faces financial pressures and rapid changes in the media landscape.
Executive Editor Matt Murray said the paper will make “substantial” reductions across its newsroom, affecting nearly all departments and sharply scaling back local, international and sports coverage.
Citing people familiar with the decision, The New York Times reported that over 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom are being laid off, alongside additional cuts on the business side. The Post did not disclose an official figure.
The Washington Post rose to global prominence for its reporting on the Watergate scandal, which helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
In a memo to staff and during a newsroom-wide Zoom call, Murray described the layoffs as necessary to reposition the paper amid declining search traffic, financial strain and the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence.
He said online search traffic to The Post has fallen by nearly half over the past three years, a figure also reported by the New York Times.
“The company’s structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product,” Murray said. “And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”
Murray said the sports department would be closed in its current form, with some reporters reassigned to features coverage. He added that the changes reflect a radically shifting economy for news media.
“This will help to secure our future … and provide us stability moving forward,” he wrote in a note to employees.
He pointed to changes in the news ecosystem, from individuals who “generate impact at low cost” to AI-generated content, as well as ongoing financial challenges that have already prompted multiple rounds of cost-cutting and buyouts.
Former Executive Editor Marty Baron, who led the newsroom until 2021, called the cuts “one of the darkest days” in the newspaper’s history.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” Baron wrote on Facebook, warning that the reductions would severely diminish The Post’s journalistic ambitions.
The Washington Post Guild, which represents many of the paper’s journalists, said the layoffs would weaken the outlet’s credibility and mission.
“In just the last three years, The Post’s workforce has shrunk by roughly 400 people,” the guild said in a statement. “Continuing to eliminate workers only stands to weaken the newspaper.”
The union said it “vehemently opposes” further staff reductions and called on readers and supporters to attend a “Save The Post” rally outside the newspaper’s Washington headquarters at noon Thursday.
“If the daily’s current owner … is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations,” the statement said, “then The Post deserves a steward that will.”
The layoffs have heavily affected The Post’s international reporting. Evan A. Feigenbaum, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on social media that the newspaper laid off its Asia editor, bureau chiefs in New Delhi, Sydney and Cairo, the entire Middle East reporting team, correspondents covering China, Iran and Türkiye, and others.
Most of the paper’s journalists based overseas were dismissed, including its Kyiv-based Ukraine correspondent, according to multiple reports.
Sports, graphics and local news teams were sharply reduced, and the newspaper’s daily podcast, Post Reports, was suspended, local media reported.
Murray said the newsroom will now prioritize coverage of politics, national security, technology, investigations and business. A reporter covering Amazon, the company founded by Bezos and currently valued at about $2.6 trillion, was also laid off.
“These layoffs are not inevitable,” the Post Guild said. “A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future.”
The cuts come as major U.S. media outlets face heightened political pressure from President Donald Trump, who routinely denounces journalists as “fake news” and has filed multiple lawsuits over coverage of his presidency.
Bezos, one of the world’s richest individuals, has grown closer to Trump during the president’s second term. Amazon paid Trump’s wife, First Lady Melania Trump, a reported $40 million for a documentary this year, along with an additional $35 million for marketing, according to media reports.
White House Communications Director Stephen Cheung reacted to the layoffs with a scornful post on X, saying, “Just a reminder that printing fake news is not a profitable business model.”
Baron said Bezos had previously resisted “brutal pressure” from Trump, but argued the paper had been undermined by “ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top.”
He cited Bezos’ decision to rein in the newspaper’s liberal-leaning editorial page and block an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris days before the 2024 election, a move widely seen as breaching editorial independence.
“Loyal readers fled the Post. In truth, they were driven away,” Baron said.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that about 250,000 digital subscribers left The Post after it declined to endorse Harris. The newspaper reportedly lost about $100 million in 2024 as advertising and subscription revenue fell.
In May 2024, Post Publisher Will Lewis told staff that the paper had lost $77 million over the previous year and about half of its audience since 2020.
By contrast, The New York Times said Wednesday that it gained more than 1 million digital subscribers in 2025, bringing its total to nearly 13 million and reinforcing its dominant position in the U.S. media market.
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