The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, revealed major layoffs, citing the need for “painful” restructuring at the iconic newspaper.
The Post did not specify the number of job cuts, but the New York Times reports about 300 of its 800 journalists were laid off.
The Post’s downsizing occurs amid mounting pressure on major U.S. traditional media outlets from President Donald Trump, who frequently labels journalists “fake news” and has filed multiple lawsuits over coverage of his presidency.
Executive editor Matt Murray said the changes at the Post mirror the dramatically shifting economics of the news media industry.
This “will help to secure our future … and provide us stability moving forward”, Murray told employees.
He pointed to transformations in the news ecosystem, including low-cost individual creators, AI-generated content, and ongoing financial pressures that have already triggered multiple rounds of cost-cutting and buyouts at the Post.
“The company’s structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product,” he said. “And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often wrote from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”
On Facebook, Marty Baron, former Post executive editor until 2021, wrote, “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organisations.”