The Washington Post is reportedly poised to make deep staffing cuts, marking the latest retrenchment by the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper.
As many as 300 people could be let go, with the biggest cuts coming in sports and the foreign staff, former Post media reporter Paul Farhi said on X. Now a freelancer, he cited former colleagues saying the cuts will include non-newsroom personnel.
Several of the Post's foreign correspondents took to social media to publicly plead their case. In a post on X, Yeganeh Torbati, who covers Turkey and Iran, wrote to the newspaper's owner saying, “Since June, I've reported on US/Israeli strikes, a dire water crisis, state coercion of the private sector, and now, horrific govt violence against protesters. I want nothing more than to keep doing this important work.”
Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon.com Inc., purchased the Post in 2013 and set about expanding the paper's footprint, injecting much-needed investment. But in recent years, the Post, like other mainstream print publications such as the Los Angeles Times, has cut back as ad-revenue dried up and subscriptions shriveled. In 2023, the Post cut about 240 jobs, mostly through buyouts.
That same year, Bezos named William Lewis, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, as the new publisher and chief executive officer.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the Post was withdrawing its plan to cover the Winter Olympics, just days before the Games are set to begin in Italy on Feb. 6. On Monday, the Post reversed course and said it would send a smaller crew of four journalists, down from more than a dozen, according to the Times.
Bezos' decision in 2024 to stop publishing presidential endorsements, ending decades of tradition, set off a firestorm of criticism, both inside and outside of the newspaper. Multiple editors and writers resigned. As many as 200,000 subscribers, or 8% of the total, canceled, National Public Radio reported at the time. Last year, the paper offered another round of buyouts.
Earlier this year the FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter, while pursuing an investigation into leaked reports of classified information.
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