Washington Post starts massive layoff, gutting sports and foreign coverage: Sources
A third of The Post's staff across all departments, not just the newsroom, will be laid off.
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The Washington Post informed its staff on Wednesday (Feb 4) that it was starting a widespread layoff that would gut its sports department and shrink its international footprint, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters and AP.
The job cuts were announced by executive editor Matt Murray on a call with employees, a source said, requesting anonymity as the matter was private.
The Post later said a third of its staff across all departments, not just the newsroom, will be laid off.
"We will be closing the sports department in its current form," Murray said in a company-wide call that began at 8.30am local time (9.30pm, Singapore time). The call transcript was shared with Reuters by the source.
"All departments are impacted. Politics and government will remain our largest desk and will remain central to our engagement and subscriber growth."
The newspaper’s books department will also be closed, and its Washington-area news department and editing staff will be restructured, Murray told staff members. Its Post Reports podcast will be suspended.
Most foreign correspondent positions are being eliminated, one of them told AFP, and media reports said that hundreds of journalists are impacted.
Staff members in the newsroom were told they would receive emails with one of two subject lines, announcing whether the person’s role had been eliminated.
The total number of layoffs was not announced in the call.
The Post did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The move comes days after the newspaper scaled back its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics amid mounting financial losses.
News outlets are struggling to maintain a sustainable business model after the internet upended the economics of journalism, shifting trust toward creators and causing digital ad rates to tank.
The more than 145-year-old newspaper made changes across several business functions to navigate those challenges by announcing job cuts last year, saying the reductions would not impact its newsroom.
The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has been cutting costs in recent years. It offered voluntary separation packages to employees across all functions in 2023 amid losses of US$100 million.
In a letter to Bezos last week, The Post's White House staff said their most impactful coverage depends heavily on collaboration with teams at risk of job cuts and that a diversified newsroom is essential at a time when the paper faces financial challenges.
Murray acknowledged that the cuts will be a shock to the system, but said the goal is to create a Post that can grow and thrive again, the person who listened to the call said.
The Washington Post Guild, the union for staff members, had appealed to the public to send a message to Bezos: “Enough is enough. Without the staff of The Washington Post, there is no Washington Post.”
Bezos said in 2013, when he bought the newspaper, that he would preserve its journalistic tradition and would not lead its day-to-day operations.
But there "will, of course, be change" over the coming years, he said then.
In recent years, The Post has clashed with some of its journalists, who have openly criticised Bezos after the newspaper decided not to endorse Kamala Harris in the November 2024 US presidential election, leading to more than 200,000 people cancelling their digital subscriptions.
The newspaper, which appointed William Lewis as its CEO in early 2024, also revamped its opinion section last year, shifting focus to "personal liberties and free markets".
Bezos was among the several tech executives seen as making overtures to US President Donald Trump last year. He was seated prominently at Trump's inauguration, underscoring his shifting ties.
Trump, who was a frequent critic of Bezos during his first term, over what the Republican president deemed unfair coverage by The Post, praised the tech billionaire in March last year, saying Bezos was doing "a real job" with the publication.
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