Listen to this article with a free account
The Washington Post announced a series of layoffs on Wednesday, after weeks of growing speculation on possible staff reductions at the nearly 150-year-old newspaper.
The move, announced during a video call Wednesday morning, comes after several reports in recent days suggested significant cuts were imminent, particularly within the newsroom.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the layoffs will mainly concern the company’s sports, books and podcast unit. The metro ticket office will also be restructured.
The announcement follows recent scrutiny of editorial budget decisions, including the newspaper’s changing plans for coverage of the Winter Olympics.
As first reported the New York Timesthe newspaper initially told more than a dozen journalists that it would no longer send them to cover the Winter Olympics in Italy, less than three weeks before the Games began. After public criticismincluding from prominent sports journalists, the newspaper then reversed course again and now plans to send four reporters, NBC News confirmed.
The Washington Post, owned by Bezos since 2013, had already laid off about four percent of its staff about a year agoalthough these cuts did not affect the newsroom.
Before the layoffs, staffers at the Washington Post’s local bureau said in a Jan. 27 open letter to owner Jeff Bezos that they had been warned their section would be “decimated” and left “unrecognizable,” urging executives to preserve the paper’s local coverage.
Likewise, the Washington Post Guild, which represents hundreds of editorial employees, also warned in the days leading up to Wednesday’s announcement that the cuts could “potentially leave our newsroom even smaller than that [Bezos] bought – and lose twice as much money.
In recent years, the media industry has entered a period of broader reckoning, with incumbents – from broadcast giants to newspapers – and digital media outlets grappling with rising costs and debt-ridden balance sheets as audiences change the way they consume information. Declining advertising revenues and intensifying competition have pushed companies to accelerate cost-cutting and restructuring plans across the industry.
As a result, recent years have seen repeated waves of layoffs and consolidations as media companies attempt to realign their businesses with a rapidly changing landscape.
More recently, Netflix decided to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery as consolidation pressures mount, while rival Paramount Global continues to pursue its own offering after merging with Skydance Media last year. CBS, under the new leadership of Bari Weiss, is also looking to reinvent itself and would have considered additional layoffs.
But signs of tension in the industry have been growing for years. Disney underwent a major restructuring in 2023, elimination of around 7,000 jobs and reorganization of the company in advance a planned CEO transition later this year.
Traditional newspapers, outside of the Post, have also been hit hard. The Los Angeles Times carried out several rounds of layoffs in recent years, most recently making a further 6% reduction in its newsroom by mid-2025.
Nor has the shift to digital platforms protected some news outlets from budget cuts. BuzzFeed closed its information division in 2023, while Vice Media filed for bankruptcy that same year. Business Insider also recently cut more than 20% of its workforce as it has scaled back in some areas while simultaneously accelerating its adoption of artificial intelligence – another area of investment that is continually reshaping the industry.
It’s a development history. Please check again for updates.
Allie Canal is a business reporter for NBC News.
Suzy Khimm is a national investigative reporter for NBC News based in Washington, DC.