Washington Post lays off 30% of its staff, including 300 reporters

The Washington Post announced to employees on Wednesday that it was carrying out widespread layoffs that will reportedly affect the paper’s sports, international, and local news coverage.

Two people with knowledge of the decision told the New York Times that the Washington Post is laying off around 30 percent of its staff, including over 300 of the around 800 reporters in the newsroom, as well as people on the business side. Emails notifying employees that they had been laid off began going out in the morning.

In a Wednesday call, The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, told newsroom employees that the paper had been losing too much money for too long, and has not been meeting the needs of its readers. He said that all sections of the paper would feel the effects of layoffs, and that in the end, the publication would be focused more on national news and politics, business, and health more so than other areas.

"If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape. And after some years when, candidly, The Post has had struggles," Murray said.

Closing will be the paper’s sports and books sections, as well as the Post Reports daily news podcast. The Post’s metro section will continue in a reduced capacity, as well as its international coverage. Some of those who were in the sports section will be moved to the features department and cover the culture of sports. Per retired Washington Post editor Robert McCartney, "Apparently The Post has laid off every reporter and editor covering the Middle East. Jerusalem bureau closed. Also Ukraine bureau closed." 

Murray said, "I know that every one of us believes deeply in this place, and we all want to save it. He added that the paper needed to "become nimbler, and to find new ways of working and innovating to understand what our customers want more of and what they want less of."

Marty Baron, former executive editor of the Washington Post, released a lengthy statement, criticizing the paper’s decision. "This ranks 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."

The paper has been owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos since 2013, and in late 2023, he hired Will Lewish as a publisher to find a path to profitability. Lewis warned in a staff meeting in 2024, "we are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff."