The Washington Post building. Picture: Shutterstock/Phil Pasquini
The Washington Post is cutting one-third of all staff across the company including “substantial newsroom reductions”.
“Nearly all” news departments are being affected, executive editor Matt Murray told staff (read his full memo below). The New York Times reported more than 300 out of about 800 journalists in the newsroom are being laid off.
The title is closing its sports and books departments and vastly cutting back the number of correspondents it has posted outside the US including in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Some sports reporters will be retained to “cover sports as a cultural and societal phenomenon” on the features desk, staff were told.
In addition the Washington-area Metro news department and editing staff face a restructure and the daily Post Reports podcast is being suspended.
In an email to staff, seen by Press Gazette, executive editor Matt Murray said: “For the immediate future, we will concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact and that resonate with readers: politics, national affairs, people, power and trends; national security in DC and abroad; forces shaping the future including science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business; journalism that empowers people to take action, from advice to wellness; revelatory investigations; and what’s capturing attention in culture, online, and in daily life.”
The Washington Post reported (with an AP byline) that staff were told they would receive an email with one of two subject lines, to tell them if their job had been eliminated or not.
Murray told staff that “the company’s structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product. This restructure will help to secure our future in service of our journalistic mission and provide us stability moving forward.”
He noted that The Washington Post’s organic search traffic has “fallen by nearly half in the last three years”.
The Washington Post reported that it has around two million subscribers, although it does not disclose this figure publicly. At least 250,000 Washington Post subscribers are believed to have cancelled after the title decided not to endorse any presidential election candidate in October 2024.
The announcement follows a week of speculation about cuts, triggered by the title cancelling plans to send staff to the Winter Olympics in Italy about two weeks before the start of the games.
The Washington Post’s foreign correspondents then wrote to proprietor Jeff Bezos urging him to protect international coverage. They said: “Cutting this deeply-sourced, battle-hardened and tireless staff would hinder The Post’s ability to respond to the biggest news developments on the horizon.”
A spokesperson for the publisher said on Wednesday: “The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company.
“These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”
Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron described it as “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s great news organisations” and said the title’s “ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever”.
He said “acute business problems” caused by “head-spinning change in media consumption” had been made “infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top – from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity”.
Email to Washington Post newsroom from executive editor Matt Murray in full:
Dear All,
As we shared in our live stream earlier, the company is taking actions today to place The Washington Post on a stronger footing and better position us in this rapidly changing era of new technologies and evolving user habits.
These moves include substantial newsroom reductions impacting nearly all news departments. For the immediate future, we will concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact and that resonate with readers: politics, national affairs, people, power and trends; national security in DC and abroad; forces shaping the future including science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business; journalism that empowers people to take action, from advice to wellness; revelatory investigations; and what’s capturing attention in culture, online, and in daily life.
We will meet with leaders in each department today and tomorrow to review the impacts on their teams.
Today’s news is painful. These are difficult actions. We are proud of, and grateful for, the many valued colleagues whose talents and passion have contributed to The Post over many years.
But we take them with clarity of purpose. The need has never been more urgent to reposition The Post. A more flexible, sustainable model will help us better navigate unprecedented volatility, competition, technological change, news-consumption habits, and cost pressure.
As you know, we have grappled with financial challenges for some time. They have affected us in multiple rounds of cost cuts and buyouts, along with periodic constraints on other kinds of spending.
We have concluded that the company’s structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product. This restructure will help to secure our future in service of our journalistic mission and provide us stability moving forward.
We are far from alone in reevaluating our model or rethinking how we operate. The ecosystem of news and information, on- and off-platform, is changing radically. News consumers enjoy more variety, voices, platforms, and options than ever before. In just the last five years, multiple startups—and even individuals—have created meaningful products that draw attention and generate impact at low cost.
Platforms like Search that shaped the previous era of digital news, and which once helped The Post thrive, are in serious decline. Our organic search has fallen by nearly half in the last three years. And we are still in the early days of AI-generated content, which is drastically reshaping user experiences and expectations.
We are producing much great journalism of which we can be proud. As we discuss every day in the news meeting, some of our best work attracts readers and generates subscriptions and engagement.
Unfortunately, some does not. Some areas, such as video, haven’t kept up with changes in how consumers get news and information. Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years. And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.
If we are to thrive, not just endure, we must reinvent our journalism and our business model with renewed ambition. We already have taken important and, in some cases, long overdue steps toward reinvention—creating the Print desk, transforming digital workflows, and embedding Audience Strategy editors in every department. Today’s moves will put us in position to find and develop better ways to connect Post journalism to news consumers in the ways they want it.
From this foundation, we aim to build on what is working, and grow with discipline and intent, to experiment, to measure and deepen what resonates with customers.
We can’t be everything to everyone. But we must be indispensable where we compete. That means continually asking why a story matters, who it serves and how it gives people a clearer understanding of the world and an advantage in navigating it.
Some of you have heard me ask how we can shrink the gap between some of what we create in our newsroom during the day and what we — and our children, families, and friends — consume at night.
Today’s actions are about addressing those questions, forcefully, to reinvent The Washington Post for this new era. This work is difficult, but it is essential. The Post is a necessary institution, and it must remain relevant.
Even amid challenges, The Washington Post retains great strengths. We have a deep pool of talented journalists and leaders, strong standards, institutional backing, a proud legacy, and millions of customers.
Most important, our central purpose remains as it ever was: To produce riveting and distinct journalism of the highest caliber that breaks news, explains the world with authority and fairness, empowers people with knowledge, and helps them live better-informed lives.
Matt
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