Washington Post announces widespread layoffs, gutting numerous parts of its newsroom

By Brian Stelter, Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — The Washington Post is announcing mass layoffs Wednesday morning, dealing another big blow to a storied media company and a newsroom that has reached a breaking point.

Executive Editor Matt Murray and human resources chief Wayne Connell sent an email to staffers Wednesday morning instructing employees to “stay home today” but attend an 8:30 a.m. ET meeting via Zoom during which the Washington Post’s leadership will announce “significant actions across the company.”

Those actions include shutting down almost the entire Sports section, closing the Books section and cancelling the daily Post Reports podcast, sources at the newspaper said.

One of the most severe cuts comes in the form of a “restructuring” of the Post’s Metro desk, which covers D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

The Post’s international coverage will also be markedly reduced, though some bureaus outside the US will remain open.

In total, the cuts account for one-third of the newspaper’s overall staff, a source familiar with the matter said.

Widespread layoffs at the Post have been expected for several weeks, especially after leadership told staff in an internal memo that they no longer planned to send any reporters to the Winter Olympics this month — a decision that was ultimately reversed.

The Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, has spoken privately about finding a path to profitability for the Post by focusing the paper’s investment on politics and a few other key areas, while cutting back in areas like sports and foreign affairs.

That prompted teams of reporters to send owner Jeff Bezos impassioned letters that urged him not to shrink the newsroom.

In one letter obtained by CNN, signed by bureau chief Matt Viser and seven other White House reporters, the staff said it will be unable to maintain its history of excellence in reporting if the Post lays off significant numbers from other news units.

“If the plan, to the extent there is one, is to reorient around politics we wanted to emphasize how much we rely on collaboration with foreign, sports, local — the entire paper, really. And if other sections are diminished, we all are,” Viser and the other signees said.

A year ago, Bezos outlined a new vision for the Post’s once-esteemed opinion section, promoting libertarian ideals, including free markets and personal liberties. That decision led opinion editor David Shipley to exit the company.

Bezos’ change came months after he canceled a planned editorial page endorsement of Kamala Harris in late 2024. That decision led to mass cancellations from subscribers, hurting the Post’s bottom line.

Some current and former journalists at the Post have pinned the drastic changes and steep cuts on Bezos’ efforts to appease President Donald Trump, given Bezos’ and Amazon’s complex relationships with the Trump administration.

“Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump,” former Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler said in a column earlier this week.

The paper’s former editor, Marty Baron, who retired in 2021, said in a statement that “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

“Of course, there were acute business problems that had to be addressed,” he added. “No one can deny that.”

However, Baron said, “The Post’s challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.