January 8, 2025
Jeff Bezos Cuts Back On Journalism Promotion At Washington Post, Fires 4% Staff
It's now about 'talent promotion.'
On Tuesday, The Washington Post suffered more layoffs at the hands of owner Jeff Bezos and a change in focus. The public relations team was told the paper is “no longer promoting the journalism,” The Daily Beast reports.
Six staffers from the publication’s relations department were let go on Jan. 7, with only four managers remaining.
Kathleen Floyd, senior publicist and co-chair of the Post’s union, said the new focus is “entirely on talent promotion” during a Zoom call.
“It’s almost unconscionable that the decision of our leadership would lead to an impact on us,” Floyd said. “It’s not the day-to-day employees’ fault we lost more than 250,000 subscribers.”
Chief communications officer Kathy Baird confirmed the move in a memo, saying that old ways just aren’t what they used to be in terms of goals for the company.
“We need our journalism to be accessed at an even greater rate, and we no longer believe traditional outreach is the way to get us there,” Baird wrote.
The layoffs are labeled as four percent of the publication’s workforce, but no one in the newsroom. In the Post‘s advertising department, 73 people were laid off.
“The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are,” a spokesperson said in a statement, according to The Daily Beast “Changes across our business functions are all in service of our greater goal to best position The Post for the future.”
Since late 2024, the Post has been met with massive scrutiny due to the impromptu changes handed down by Amazon’s billionaire owner. For the first time in years, the publication failed to endorse a presidential candidate. Once expected to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, Bezos killed the narrative, resulting in a number of high-profile columnists resigning.
The decision led to more than 200,000 Post subscribers ditching their reader subscriptions. Bezos pulling the plug on an endorsement resulted in a $77 million loss for the company.
The new year has already been a rocky one for the esteemed newspaper. Cartoonists Ann Telnaes quit after a controversial drawing of Bezos and other media executives bowing before President-elect Donald Trump was rejected by a top editor, according to the Post.
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable,” Telnaes wrote on her Substack. “For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist.
“But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning because, as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’”
RELATED CONTENT: Nick Cannon Reflects On Lupus Journey, Calling Himself The ‘Black Tony Stark’
