Inside one of the ‘darkest days in the history’ of The Washington Post

“We’re witnessing a murder.”

That’s how Ashley Parker, a staff writer for The Atlantic and former star reporter at The Washington Post, described what happened at the Post on Wednesday.

A third of the Post’s staff — about 300 journalists — was laid off. Nearly all departments were affected. The sports and books desks were pretty much eliminated. The foreign desk was gutted. My Poynter colleague, Angela Fu, has the details here.

And so Parker wrote, “Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special. The Post has survived for nearly 150 years, evolving from a hometown family newspaper into an indispensable national institution, and a pillar of the democratic system. But if Bezos and Lewis continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.”

The tone Wednesday, within and around the Post, was one of heartbreak, confusion and demoralization. But mostly, it seemed, it was anger.

Marty Baron, the legendary former executive editor of the Post, wrote, “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

Margaret Sullivan, a Columbia University journalism professor and former media columnist at the Post, told The Associated Press’ David Bauder, “It’s just devastating news for anyone who cares about journalism in America and, in fact, the world.”

Sally Jenkins, the iconic former sports columnist at the Post, tweeted, “The incredible incompetence and pusillanimity of William Lewis and (executive editor) Matt Murray is on display for itself at the @washingtonpost this morning. It's a self own. This is their last job. Others will work again. They won't.”

Meanwhile, Post reporters posted their layoffs throughout the day, including one reporter who said she found out she was being let go while in a literal warzone in Ukraine.

The anger is mostly directed toward Bezos and Lewis. It was noted repeatedly on Wednesday that Bezos is worth around $250 billion. The New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote on X:

Original Bezos purchase price of the Washington Post in 2013: $250 million

Bezos net worth in 2013: $25.2 billion

Net increase in Bezos wealth since buying the Post: $224.2 billion

Last reported annual losses of Post: $100 million

Number of years Bezos could absorb those losses with what he makes in a single week: 5

It was also noted over and over that Bezos’ Amazon recently invested $75 million into the movie “Melania” about first lady Melania Trump. And that his yacht is worth $500 million. And that his 2025 wedding cost upward of $50 million.

And while some might argue that it's his money and business, and that part of being a wealthy businessman is not suffering the kinds of losses that the Post has, the counterargument is that when Bezos decided to buy the paper, he assumed a civic responsibility not to run it into the ground. Or remove so many of the things that make it special.

The other legitimate question: What exactly is the Post’s long-range plan?

The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin, Katie Robertson and Erik Wemple wrote, “The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.”

In her story for Poynter, Fu wrote, “In an email to staff, Murray said that the changes are necessary after years of financial challenges. The current media environment has evolved greatly, he wrote. Search, which once helped the paper ‘thrive,’ is in decline due to the growth of artificial intelligence. Organic search fell by nearly half in the last three years, Murray wrote.”

Murray told the staff, “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.”

In other words, Murray essentially told staff that the paper is losing too much money and isn’t producing a product that readers want.

In her essay for The Atlantic, Parker, the former Post reporter, wrote, “Today’s layoffs provide a whiff of the latest alleged strategy: an almost-exclusive focus on politics and national-security coverage, though even that explanation defies credulity, as the growing list of those laid off includes some of the nation’s finest political and international reporters and editors. As one longtime Post reporter observed to me, ‘We’re changing and trimming and cutting our way toward a much more mundane product, and one that doesn’t seem to attract more readers.’”

Many of the Post’s wounds have been self-inflicted, such as the infamous decision to kill an endorsement for Kamala Harris before the 2024 presidential election. That, and a major shift in its editorial department, led to the paper losing several prominent voices. Their departures led to a hemorrhaging of subscribers.

Parker wrote, “I don’t pretend to have the answers to the Post’s financial woes, or a successful business model for a local paper that is also the nation’s hometown paper. But I can tell you what will be lost if these two men — who don’t seem to understand what the Post was, what it still is, and what it could be — continue to treat it like a distressed asset or a bargaining chip with a president who, ultimately, does not respect bargaining supplicants.”

So what happens now?

First, the newsroom’s morale must be deeply shaken.

Murray told staff, “We all recognize the actions we are taking today will be painful – most of all, of course, for those of you who are directly affected, but for everybody. I know that the reset is going to feel like a shock to the system and raise some questions for everybody.”

Former Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR’s David Folkenflik, “There's no question you can produce a world-class news report with fewer people. But the how and why matter. What's the strategy? The Post occupies a singular place in American journalism. It needs visionary and independent stewardship that is equal to its journalism, worthy of its promise and necessary to meet this important moment in history.”

In the end, however, will the Post have enough — enough leadership, enough vision and, most importantly, enough journalists?

Baron wrote, “The Washington Post'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."

And Washington Post chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein told Semafor’s Max Tani, “This is a tragic day for American journalism, the city of Washington, and the country as a whole. I’m grieving for reporters I love and whose work upheld the truest and most noble callings of the profession. They are being punished for mistakes they did not cause.”

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Death of a sports section

Among the most depressing parts of Wednesday’s Post news was the elimination of the gold standard of sports sections. Over the years, the Post boasted a who’s who of sportswriting superstars, including Shirley Povich, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Sally Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Christine Brennan, John Feinstein, Kevin Blackistone and a young David Remnick.

That tradition carried through with elite sports journalists such as Candace Buckner, Barry Svrluga, Dave Sheinin and Chuck Culpepper, just to name a few.

But enough of that kind of talk, writes The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis in a spot-on analysis.

Curtis doesn’t want to hear about the “glory days” of the Post sports section, adding, “Here on the day the Washington Post sports section died — was killed, in fact — we ought to resist nostalgia for two reasons. First, nostalgia does little to polish the circulating résumés of the Post sportswriters who lost their jobs. Second, nostalgia is liable to make you wistful. What happened today should make you angry.”

Curtis added, “Trying to figure out how the Post’s sports section could have been saved is a mind-bending exercise. Did anyone who runs the paper want to save it? Post sportswriters didn’t know their section was on the chopping block until recently.”

That became clearer when the Post told the sports department it would not cover the upcoming Winter Olympics and would not send reporters to cover spring training of the hometown Washington Nationals. After backlash — and the realization that it had already spent $80,000 on travel and housing in Italy — the Post shifted gears slightly and sent four reporters to the Olympics.

But by then, the rumors about the sports department felt inevitable

The section had about 45 staff members, and all but a handful were laid off Wednesday. According to executive editor Matt Murray, those who remain will join the features team to cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon.”

The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Murray said in an interview that the way sports content was delivered and consumed had changed drastically. Video has become more popular, and professional sports leagues are increasingly telling their own stories. The sports media industry has also splintered into niche and broad providers of content, he said, and The Post needs to determine where it fits in.”

Murray told Mullin, “We have excellent sports reporting, and the very best sports coverage we’ve done does break through,” Mr. Murray said. “Generally The Post isn’t seen digitally as a major sports destination. So we’re kind of wrestling with some of those questions.”

As Curtis wrote, today is a day to be angry for those of us who loved and respected the Post’s sports section. But it is also a day to be sad.

As Les Carpenter, a longtime Post sportswriter who was in Italy to cover the Olympics, told the Times, “We were the last great American sports section. It was a dream come true to be a part of it twice. The idea that it’s gone, it’s just heartbreaking.”

More notable coverage and reactions to the earth-shaking Post news

• For The New Yorker, Ruth Marcus with “How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post.”
• Nieman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen with “‘Something I will be most proud of when I’m 90’: How Jeff Bezos used to talk about The Washington Post, and what’s changed.”
• The Post, which for some time has not reported on itself, didn’t publish a story about the cuts on its website until midafternoon. It was written not internally by one of the Post’s media writers, but by AP media writer David Bauder.
• Amazon was founded by, of course, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Post. The Post laid off the reporter who covers Amazon. Here’s more from The Hill’s Dominick Mastrangelo.
• The National Press Club issued a statement about the Post’s layoffs, saying it is a “devastating setback for the scores of individual journalists affected and for the journalism profession.”
• The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr, formerly of the Post, reported, “Post employees who have been laid off will continue to be on staff through 10 April, though they will not be required to work. They will receive six months of continued health insurance coverage.”

And the latest from Atlanta

The Washington Post isn’t the only newspaper facing layoffs this week. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting about 50 positions, or about 15% of its employees. The newsroom will account for about half of those layoffs.

The AJC’s J. Scott Trubey wrote, “The AJC has spent the past few years transitioning from a traditional newspaper into a modern media company. On Dec. 31, the AJC published its final print edition after 157 years but continues to be a vital source of news on its flagship website, AJC.com, on its mobile app, in videos, podcasts, social media and its ePaper.”

Trubey added, “The AJC ended 2025 with more than 100,000 digital subscribers and far exceeded its goals in retaining print subscribers as digital customers.”

Andrew Morse, president and publisher of the AJC, told Trubey, “We’ve made these difficult decisions because we believe they will best position us to continue to accelerate the AJC’s growth. We have invested heavily in our editorial, product and business teams over the last three years, and we’ve seen direct results from that investment.”

Morse added, “As we grow, we must be agile and ensure we are devoting resources where they will have the most impact for our audience. While these changes are difficult on a personal level, they will best position the AJC to continue delivering journalism worth paying for.”

Trubey added in his story, “Despite Tuesday’s announced cuts, the AJC continues to have open jobs it is actively recruiting to fill, Morse said, and recently hired a new food editor. He said the company will continue to attract talented journalists and other professionals to improve its reporting, storytelling, analytics and customer experience, and to boost revenue.”

As the Post declines, The New York Times ascends

For this item, I turned it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.

As journalists gathered on social media Wednesday to mourn layoffs at The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times was busy sharing news of a very different tenor — it ended its last fiscal year with a profit and was focused on growing.

“2025 was a great year for The New York Times, thanks to strong execution against a clear, long term strategy. We added 1.4 million net new digital subscribers, bringing total subscribers to 12.8 million,” president and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien told investors on an earnings call. “We generated more than $2 billion in total digital revenues for the first time.”

The Times ended the fiscal year with an adjusted operating profit of $550 million, up more than 20% from the previous year. It grew its total revenue by 9% year over year to more than $2.8 billion. During the last quarter, the Times saw higher-than-expected growth in advertising revenue. Digital advertising revenue was especially strong, increasing 25% year over year.

At the same time, costs were up — a trend multiple investors pointed out during the call. The Times saw adjusted operating costs grow 9.7% year-over-year last quarter. It reported more than $2.2 billion in adjusted operating costs over the entire year.

One contributing factor to the rising costs was the Times’ decision to invest in video, which Kopit Levien said would be a priority moving forward. The Times has already started producing more videos of its journalists explaining their reporting and has turned many of its popular podcasts into video shows.

“As linear TV continues to decline and viewing habits shift even more to digital platforms, we see a long-term opportunity to establish The Times as a preferred brand for watching news, in addition to reading and listening,” Kopit Levien said.

She added that one area in which the Times has distinguished itself despite it still being “early days” is visual investigations. Journalists conducting those investigations use traditional reporting techniques, along with forensic analysis, to break down news events captured on video, such as the recent killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.

“You’ve seen a lot of that recently. That is something we're doing more and more of,” Kopit Levien said. “I think that becomes even more important in a sort of low-trust environment.”

Some media watchers were quick to point out the juxtaposition between the Times’ success and the Post layoffs, announced at the same time as the Times’ earnings call. The Post, which has struggled to identify a coherent business strategy, has bled both money and talent in recent years. All of that came to a head Wednesday morning when the Post undertook its most extensive cuts yet, laying off a third of its staff, including more than 300 journalists in its 800-person newsroom.

The Times, by contrast, has found success by diversifying its offerings beyond its traditional news report. It has enticed new users to subscribe through its popular games and cooking sections, as well as its product reviews website Wirecutter and its sports journalism site The Athletic. The Times had more than 2,800 employees involved in its journalism operations as of December 2024.

Trump talks to Llamas

President Donald Trump sat down with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas for an interview on Wednesday. Some of the interview aired on Wednesday’s “Nightly News,” as well as “Top Story with Tom Llamas” on NBC News NOW. An exclusive segment of their conversation will be shown during NBC’s Super Bowl pregame show.

Trump told Llamas that he plans to stay out of the battle between Netflix and Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump is believed to have good relationships with Paramount CEO David Ellison and David’s father, Larry Ellison. But he insists he won’t get involved.

Trump said, “I haven’t been involved. I must say, I guess I’m considered to be a very strong president. I’ve been called by both sides. It’s the two sides, but I’ve decided I shouldn’t be involved. The Justice Department will handle it.”

As of now, it appears that WBD has decided its best deal is with Netflix.

Llamas also asked about the recent shooting deaths of two people in Minnesota — Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Trump told Llamas, “Well, look, I’m not happy with the two incidents. Both of them. It’s not one or the other. He was not an angel, and she was not an angel. Look at some tapes from back — but still, I’m not happy with what happened there. Nobody could be happy, and ICE wasn’t happy either. But I’m gonna be always with our great people of law enforcement — ICE, police, we have to back them. If we don’t back them, we don’t have a country.”

Llamas pressed Trump, asking if Good and Pretti’s actions justified them getting shot. Trump said, “No, I don’t. It should have not happened. … And you know who feels worse about it than anybody? The people of ICE. They’re strong, tough people.”

Speaking of Llamas

Tom Llamas is my guest on the latest “Poynter Report Podcast.”

We discuss Llamas’ journey from unpaid intern to one of the most prominent jobs in journalism, the role of the evening news, what it’s like to follow a legend such as Lester Holt, and what the day in the life of a network news anchor is like.

Aside from watching on YouTube, you can also find the show on Apple, Spotify, and most places where you find podcasts.

Olympic changes

As previously reported, “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie will not travel to Italy for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Guthrie is in Arizona with her family while her mother remains missing.

NBC announced that Mary Carillo will replace Guthrie as co-host of Friday’s opening ceremonies. Carillo will be alongside Terry Gannon.

Meanwhile, NBC also announced that “Today” show co-host Craig Melvin, who was scheduled to host NBC’s late-night coverage from Milan Feb. 7 to 9, will instead remain in the United States. Ahmed Fareed, who was already scheduled to serve as a daytime host in Milan for a portion of the games, will now host “Olympic Late Night” on those dates.

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Media tidbits

• From The Washington Post, “Myra MacPherson, trailblazing Washington Post journalist, dies at 91.”
• The Hollywood Reporter’s Caitlin Huston with “YouTube Made More Than $60 Billion in Revenue Last Year.”
• Mediaite’s Sean James with “JD Vance Defends Trump DOJ Arresting ‘Dumbest Man on Television’ Don Lemon”

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