The Washington Post announced plans on Wednesday to significantly downsize the paper, scaling back international coverage, ending the sports section in its “current form,” restructuring the metro desk and eliminating the books section, according to Post sources.
Executive editor Matt Murray framed the moves to staff in a Wednesday morning meeting as a “strategic reset,” the sources said. He did not announce how many jobs will be affected.
“These moves are painful,” Murray said. “This is a tough day.”
HR chief Wayne Connell told staff they’ll receive an email saying whether or not they’re roles have been eliminated.
Murray took no questions during the short meeting, which rankled staff.
“This was handled with cowardice,” one longtime staffer told TheWrap. “Washington Post executives took no ownership this morning for the questionable strategic and business decisions they have made that put the Post behind.”
The Post, which seized the moment during the first Trump administration, battling for scoops with the New York Times, appears to be significantly retrenching in the second term. While Post reporters have continued breaking ground in covering the current Trump administration, on topics ranging from DOGE to Venezeula to White House renovations, the newsroom has been plagued by management misfires, financial losses and staff departures.
The Post laid off roughly 100 people on its business side in Jan. 2025 before instituting another round of buyouts last summer, which led to the departures of some of the paper’s top journalists and opinion columnists. Several of its top reporters have also left for outlets including the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among others.
Will Lewis’ two-year tenure as CEO and publisher has been marred by controversiesand bungled plans, such as his “third newsroom” initiative. And some of management’s decisions have angered subscribers, most notably in killing a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris in October 2024. Hundreds of thousands of subscribers reportedly canceled their subscriptions. The paper reportedly lost around $100 million 2024.
Weeks into the second Trump administration, Bezos reoriented the Post’s opinion pages around personal liberties and free markets, prompting an additional 75,000 subscribers to flee.
Bezos has appeared to ingratiate himself with Trump in the second term, sitting alongside other tech titans at the president’s inauguration. Amazon also donated to Trump’s inauguration fund, along with his White House ballroom project; most recently, the company reportedly paid $75 millionto procure and market a documentary on Melania Trump. On Monday, Bezos played host to the Defense Secretary at Blue Origin’s space facilities in Florida.
Meanwhile, Bezos has been notably silent in response to the shocking FBI search of a Post reporter’s home, a move that prompted outrage from journalists and press freedom groups. He also appeared distant in the face of private and public pleas from staff not to make steep cuts.
In recent weeks, several of the sections expected to be impacted had sent personal appeals to Bezos to try and stave off the cuts, including the White House, foreign, and metro teams.
“We are clear-eyed about the financial challenges facing the paper,” the team of White House reporters wrote last week, according to a copy of the letter obtained by TheWrap. “When we accepted our assignments to cover the White House last year, we took the job with a goal to win back former subscribers and draw in new readers. A diversified Washington Post helps us do it.”
The foreign desk issued an appeal to Bezos on Sunday after staffers were told not to travel into high-risk situations, and the metro desk sent a similar message to the owner earlier this week.
“The way forward — toward a greater, more successful and more profitable Washington Post — is not by decimating its local section nor by eliminating the jobs of journalists who live here, raise their families here and understand this region inside and out.”
The paper’s union had also been sharing some of its reporters’ appeals to Bezos on X with the tag “#SaveThePost.” Those, too, went unanswered.
The post The Washington Post Is Slashing Its Newsroom in ‘Strategic Reset’ appeared first on TheWrap.
