The Washington Submit’s worldwide desks and reporters who lined Silicon Valley — together with the one assigned to Jeff Bezos’ sprawling e-commerce empire — have been among the many hardest hit when the capital’s most storied newspaper introduced sweeping layoffs on Wednesday.
The massacre left the Submit’s newsroom questioning the paper’s future, with one nameless laid-off reporter telling JHB: “Are we a worldwide information group or will we simply wish to be Politico now?”
Matt Murray, the Submit’s government editor, mentioned in an all-staff Zoom name that the publication would bear “a broad strategic reset” resulting in “a big employees discount.”
In follow, this implies large hits to native protection, closing the sports activities part “in its present type,” eliminating the books part, shrinking the worldwide workforce, restructuring the metro part, flattening the images workforce and suspending its “Submit Stories” podcast ― successfully gutting a legendary newsroom famed for breaking the Watergate scandal because it appears to reply to shifts in information consumption.
Amongst these put out of labor is the Amazon reporter tasked with holding Bezos’ retail big to account: Caroline O’Donovan, who introduced her departure on X.
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The cuts reportedly symbolize a one-third of the employees being laid off, although it was not instantly clear what number of whole workers the newspaper had. Early stories advised 300 jobs would go.
Bezos, a billionaire who’s the world’s fourth-richest man, has slashed the newsroom’s dimension and dramatically shifted its focus since shopping for it in 2013. The Washington Submit Guild mentioned the workforce has already shrunk by about 400 folks in simply the previous three years.
Wednesday’s transfer comes as Bezos has been noticed cozying as much as President Donald Trump — a infamous detractor of the free press — in his second administration. Bezos was available throughout Trump’s inauguration final January and just lately dumped some $75 million right into a flattering documentary on the primary girl, Melania Trump.
“I’ve gotten to know him,” Trump mentioned of Bezos final yr. “I believe he’s attempting to do an actual job. Jeff Bezos is attempting to do an actual job with The Washington Submit, and that wasn’t occurring earlier than.”
The devastation impressed a refrain of quick condemnation.
“I simply don’t know the way The Washington Submit goes to be The Washington Submit after this. It seems like the top of it.”
– A just lately laid-off nationwide reporter for The Washington Submit.
Marty Baron, a legendary former Submit editor, known as it one of many “darkest days” within the newspaper’s historical past.
Baron was not shy about blaming Bezos for the paper’s woes, singling out a very “ill-conceived” choice by the billionaire to finish the paper’s custom of endorsing presidential nominees on the 2024 presidential election, which he known as a “gutless order” that price a whole lot of 1000’s of subscribers. The Submit is believed to have about 2 million whole subscribers.
Opting to slender the main target of the Submit’s opinion pages to “private liberties and free markets” additionally prompted cancellations final yr.
“Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an particularly ugly stain of their very own. This can be a case examine in near-instant, self-inflicted model destruction,” Baron wrote on Fb. He was the newspaper’s editor from 2012 till his retirement 5 years in the past.
The cuts additionally seemed to be much more intensive than introduced to employees.
One reporter who misplaced their job, talking to JHB anonymously, mentioned that many have been shocked on the carnage they noticed unfold all through the day.
They mentioned nearly all of The Submit’s tech reporters have been going, and there was a suggestion that the whole San Francisco bureau was closing.
“Clearly, the Submit is retrenching vastly on its dedication to Silicon Valley reporting and tech accountability, which is disturbing,” they mentioned.
Tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler additionally mentioned he had been reduce. He posted an image of the day the bureau was created again in 2019.
A nationwide reporter who was laid off informed JHB that at the least 13 journalists who labored on the local weather desk have been let go.
“It doesn’t seem to be it’s going to be a remaining protection space,” the reporter, who requested to stay nameless, mentioned of the local weather beat.
The bureau chief in Ukraine, the Asia editor, the New Delhi bureau chief, and a correspondent overlaying Turkey and Iran all confirmed that they had been laid off, amongst others. Claire Parker, the Cairo bureau chief, mentioned that her place had been eradicated alongside each different reporter and editor within the Center East.
A reporter who spoke to JHB mentioned it was “bananas” to cut back on international reporting to such an enormous extent.
“I used to be simply laid off by The Washington Submit in the course of a warzone,” wrote Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson. “I’ve no phrases. I’m devastated.”
Sydney bureau chief Michael Miller additionally mentioned he was dropping his job. “Worse, tens of millions of readers will lose my colleagues’ sensible protection. At a time of tumult, we’d like extra data, not much less,” he wrote.
A world reporter who misplaced their job and spoke to JHB anonymously criticized the paper for abandoning on-the-ground protection in Ukraine and the Center East as struggle raged in each areas.
“It’s fairly stunning for us all on worldwide that instantly we don’t have a workforce within the Center East, and we don’t have anybody in Asia,” the individual mentioned. “We’ve now received one individual apparently reporting in London … are we a worldwide information group or will we simply wish to be Politico now?”
The person mentioned that whereas executives “have did not provide you with a plan on tips on how to monetize us efficiently,” it’s the reporters who’ve “uprooted their lives to report for this newspaper which might be getting the chop.”
“Even those that stay don’t even classify themselves as fortunate,” they mentioned, explaining how rank-and-file have totally misplaced belief in administration, who’ve but to supply clear solutions in regards to the paper’s future.
In truth, the person informed JHB, there was “no communication” on the cuts from Bezos, or CEO and Writer Will Lewis, a controversial rent Bezos made again in 2023.
“Crickets,” the individual mentioned.
One of many laid-off reporters informed JHB this “seems like the top” of the publication.
“I simply don’t know the way The Washington Submit goes to be The Washington Submit after this,” the individual mentioned. “It seems like the top of it. I mourn for our readers, too, simply as a lot as I do for us reporters.”
Many different Submit reporters took to social media to vent their anger at what one known as “a bloodbath.”
Some mentioned plainly that the cuts have been politically pushed. Emmanuel Felton, a race and ethnicity reporter, confirmed on X that he was among the many employees reduce, including: “This comes six months after listening to in a nationwide assembly that race protection drives subscriptions. This wasn’t a monetary choice, it was an ideological one.”
The Washington Submit Guild — the union representing its reporters — mentioned the layoffs weren’t “inevitable” and warned that “a newsroom can’t be hollowed out with out penalties for its credibility, its attain and its future.”
The Guild additionally known as for Bezos to get replaced if he’s not prepared to spend money on the publication.
“If Jeff Bezos is now not prepared to spend money on the mission that has outlined this paper for generations and serve the tens of millions who depend upon Submit journalism, then The Submit deserves a steward that may,” it mentioned in an announcement.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) echoed that suggestion on the finish of a prolonged assertion lamenting the paper he spent so a few years studying “from cowl to cowl.”
“I urge [Bezos] to contemplate promoting the Washington Submit to somebody who will probably be a greater steward of this beloved and important establishment,” he wrote.
The corporate acknowledged the affect of the cuts in an announcement put out early Wednesday. The Submit is “taking various tough however decisive actions right this moment for our future, in what quantities to a big restructuring throughout the corporate,” it mentioned in an announcement.
“These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our deal with delivering the distinctive journalism that units The Submit aside and, most significantly, engages our clients,” it added.
In an indication of the instances, the Submit had a evident lack of protection of the interior massacre by itself web site.