Washington Post cuts a third of its staff in a blow to a legendary news
brand
[February 05, 2026] By
DAVID BAUDER
The Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff Wednesday,
eliminating its sports section, several foreign bureaus and its books
coverage in a widespread purge that represented a brutal blow to
journalism and one of its most legendary brands.
The Post's executive editor, Matt Murray, called the move painful but
necessary to put the outlet on stronger footing and to weather changes
in technology and user habits. “We can't be everything to everyone,”
Murray said in a note to staff members.
He outlined the changes in a companywide online meeting, and staff
members then began getting emails with one of two subject lines —
telling them their role was or was not eliminated.
Rumors of layoffs had circulated for weeks, ever since word leaked that
sports reporters who had expected to travel to Italy for the Winter
Olympics would not be going. But when official word came down, the size
and scale of the cuts were shocking, affecting virtually every
department in the newsroom.
“It's just devastating news for anyone who cares about journalism in
America and, in fact, the world,” said Margaret Sullivan, a Columbia
University journalism professor and former media columnist at the Post
and The New York Times. “The Washington Post has been so important in so
many ways, in news coverage, sports and cultural coverage.”
Martin Baron, the Post's first editor under its current owner,
billionaire Jeff Bezos, condemned his former boss and called what has
happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted
brand destruction.”
And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the layoffs “part of a
broader reprehensible pattern in which corporate decisions are hollowing
out newsrooms across the country.”
In an speech to members of the Washington Press Club Foundation, Pelosi
said: “A free press cannot fulfill its mission if it is starved of the
resources it needs to survive. And when the newsrooms are weakened, our
republic is weakened.”
Journalists pleaded with Bezos for help
Bezos, who has been silent in recent weeks amid pleas from Post
journalists to step in and prevent the cutbacks, had no immediate
comment.
The newspaper has been bleeding subscribers in part due to decisions
made by Bezos, including pulling back from an endorsement of Kamala
Harris, a Democrat, during the 2024 presidential election against Donald
Trump, a Republican, and directing a more conservative turn on liberal
opinion pages.
A private company, the Post does not reveal how many subscribers it has,
but it is believed to be roughly 2 million. The Post would also not say
how many people it has on staff, making it impossible to estimate how
many people were laid off Wednesday. The Post also did not outline its
finances.
The Post’s troubles stand in contrast to its longtime competitor The New
York Times, which has been thriving in recent years, in large part due
to investments in ancillary products such as games and its Wirecutter
product recommendations. The Times has doubled its staff over the past
decade.
Eliminating the sports section puts an end to a department that has
hosted many well-known bylines through the years, among them John
Feinstein, Michael Wilbon, Shirley Povich, Sally Jenkins and Tony
Kornheiser. The Times has also largely ended its sports section, but it
has replaced the coverage by buying The Athletic and incorporating its
work into the Times website.
The Post’s Book World, a destination for book reviews, literary news and
author interviews, has been a dedicated section in its Sunday paper.
A half-century ago, the Post's coverage of Watergate, led by intrepid
reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, entered the history books.
The Style section under longtime Executive Editor Ben Bradlee hosted
some of the country's best feature writing.
[to top of second column] |
A person walks into the One Franklin Square Building, home of The
Washington Post newspaper, June 21, 2024, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
 All Mideast correspondents and
editors laid off
Word of specific cuts drifted out during the day, as when Cairo
Bureau Chief Claire Parker announced on X that she had been laid
off, along with all of the newspaper's Middle East correspondents
and editors. “Hard to understand the logic,” she wrote.
Lizzie Johnson, who wrote last week about covering a war zone in
Ukraine without power, heat or running water, said she had been laid
off, too.
Anger and sadness spread across the journalism world.
“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,” Ashley Parker,
a former Post journalist, wrote in an essay in The Atlantic. But if
the paper’s leadership continues its current path, “it may not
survive much longer.”
Fearing for the future, Parker was among the staff members who left
the newspaper for other jobs in recent months.
Atlanta paper also makes cuts
Also on Wednesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which stopped
print editions and went all-digital at the end of last year,
announced that it was cutting 50 positions, or roughly 15% of its
staff. Half of the eliminated jobs were in the newsroom.
Murray said the Post would concentrate on areas that demonstrate
authority, distinctiveness and impact, and resonate with readers,
including politics, national affairs and security. Even during its
recent troubles, the Post has been notably aggressive in coverage of
Trump's changes to the federal workforce.
The company's structure is rooted in a different era, when the Post
was a dominant print product, Murray said in his note to the staff.
In areas such as video, the outlet hasn't kept up with consumer
habits, he said.
“Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in
the last five years,” he said. “And even as we produce much
excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one
slice of the audience.”
While there are business areas that need to be addressed, Baron
pointed a finger of blame at Bezos — for a “gutless” order to kill a
presidential endorsement and for remaking an editorial page that
stands out only for “moral infirmity” and “sickening” efforts to
curry favor with Trump.
“Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the
values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post,” Baron wrote. “In
truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands."
Baron said he was grateful for Bezos' support when he was editor,
noting that the Amazon founder came under brutal pressure from Trump
during the president's first term.
“He spoke forcefully and eloquently of a free press and The Post's
mission, demonstrating his commitment in concrete terms,” Baron
wrote. “He often declared that The Post's success would be among the
proudest achievements of his life. I wish I detected the same spirit
today. There is no sign of it.”
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