ap/taz | Die US-Zeitung Washington Post Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is laying off a third of its workforce. The layoffs affect all departments and not just the editorial team, editor-in-chief Matt Murray told employees. The newspaper began major austerity measures on Wednesday, including dismantling its sports department and reducing the number of its foreign journalists. The office in Jerusalem and the one in Ukraine are said to have been closed Robert McCartney, a former employee of the newspaper, posted on X.
Murray acknowledged the cuts were a shock, but the goal was to create a newspaper that could grow and thrive again. The Washington Post, famous for her Watergate revelations, most recently reported extensively on President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal workers.
Editorial staff were told they would receive emails with one of two subject lines informing whether or not their position would be eliminated. The exact number of layoffs was not mentioned in the conference call. The number of subscribers is also not known, but it is assumed to be around two million.
The newspaper is closing its literary department and its Washington-area newsroom. Editorial work will be restructured and the “Post Reports” podcast will be discontinued.
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The measures had been expected for several weeks after it was leaked that the newspaper would not send sports reporters to the Winter Olympics in Italy. After the plan became public knowledge, the rowed Washington Post back and announced that it would send a smaller team.
The newspaper’s difficulties are in contrast to its long-standing competitor, the New York Timeswhich has doubled its workforce over the past decade.
In the past few weeks, many employees of the Washington Post addressed directly to the owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper in 2013. The newspaper is also losing subscribers because of his decisions. In 2024, he rejected the newspaper’s support for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and steered the liberal opinion pages in a more conservative direction.
The employees’ union, the Washington Post Guild, had called on the public to send Bezos a message: “Enough is enough! Without the employees of the Washington Post there are none Washington Post.“