Washington Post sacks one-third of its staff

Nathan Jolly

February 5, 2026 11:17

Washington Post sacks one-third of its staff

The Washington Post has slashed its staff numbers

The Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff overnight, with major cuts across all departments. The publication’s editing, metro, books, and sports desks, plus its international bureaus, were the hardest hit by the cuts.

The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, broke the news to staff during a company-wide Zoom call.

“For too long, we’ve operated with a structure that’s too rooted in the days when we were a quasi-monopoly local newspaper,” Murray said in the staff video call. “We need a new way forward and a sounder foundation”.

“All departments are impacted. Politics and government will remain our largest desk and will remain central to our engagement and subscriber growth. We will be closing the sports department in its current form.”

According to reports, after the meeting, staffers received emails with one of two subject lines, either indicating they had been sacked or that their jobs were secure.

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In a note to staff, Murray said the newspaper hadn’t kept up with consumer habits and had maintained too many of its heritage structures.

“Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years,” he wrote. “And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”

He said the changes will “place The Washington Post on a stronger footing”, noting the paper hasn’t kept up with the “rapidly changing era of new technologies and evolving user habits.”

Since Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013, the Post has operated as a private company, meaning subscriber figures and staff numbers aren’t made public. The Post didn’t publicly disclose how many roles were lost, however The New York Times reported that more than 300 of the 800-odd journalists in the newsroom were made redundant.

When the company’s current publisher and CEO Will Lewis took over in January 2024, he told Washington Post staff that the paper had lost $177 million (A$253m) over the past two years.

“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” The Post said in a statement to media.

“These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

In what appeared to be a piece of self-aggrandising reportage, the Washington Post’s own headline reported the cuts as “a blow to a legendary news brand”. A closer read revealed the legendary news brand’s story was taken from the AP news wire.

Forbes lists Bezos’s net worth at approximately $249 billion.