Dozens of employees are expected to be laid off at the Washington Post in the coming week in what is another of several tumultuous episodes in recent months for the storied title, according to a report by media reporter Oliver Darcy.
“The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned … newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees,” Darcy, the former CNN reporter, wrote in his newsletter Status.
Darcy also reported Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey is leaving the publication and is expected to join the Wall Street Journal. The Post, whose publisher is the UK-born Will Lewis, did not immediately comment to Darcy on the expected layoffs.
The cuts come as the Washington Post has faced scrutiny from within its own ranks following the publication’s decision in October to halt a planned endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, which was defended by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
More than 250,000 subscriptions to the Post were cancelled in protest of the decision. Two opinion writers and an editor resigned in response to the intervention, which came shortly before Republican nominee Donald Trump defeated Harris, won a second presidency and is set to be sworn back in to the White House on 20 January.
Over the weekend, Washington Post’s Pulitzer prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned in response to the newspaper refusing to publish a satirical cartoon depicting Bezos.
In December, two political correspondents at the Washington Post, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, left for the Atlantic.
And in September 2024, the Washington Post laid off 54 employees in its tech software division, a year after the publication cut 240 jobs through voluntary buyouts.
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Darcy’s scoop on the upcoming newspaper layoffs at the Post came as the Bezos-founded Amazon’s streaming service Prime announced an upcoming documentary on former and incoming first lady Melania Trump. Amazon in December also announced plans to donate $1m to help fund the president-elect’s second inauguration – and said that it would also stream the event on its Prime Video service, a separate in-kind donation worth another $1m.
