The Washington Post Lays Off Hundreds Of Workers, Former Staff Calls It ‘The Darkest Days’

The Washington Post is being criticized by current and former staff after laying off a third of its newsroom.

The Washington Post employees are speaking out after layoffs cut about a third of the newsroom, a move former executive editor says “ranks among the darkest days.”

On Feb. 4, the Jeff Bezos–owned legacy outlet laid off hundreds of workers after weeks of uncertainty, with Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray announcing the cuts during a morning meeting and calling them part of a “strategic reset,” The Guardian reports.

“It’s an absolute bloodbath,” one staffer who spoke anonymously said.

In an audio recording of the meeting, Murray acknowledged that the Post, founded in 1877, has struggled to reach audiences and cited the need to compete in a crowded media landscape as a reason for the layoffs.

“Today, The Washington Post is taking a number of actions across the company to secure our future,” he said.

As part of the shakeup, the Post is ending its current sports desk and reassigning some staff to a new team. The outlet is also restructuring local coverage, scaling back international reporting, eliminating its books desk, and suspending its flagship daily podcast, Post Reports.

Murray said about 12 international bureaus will remain, with a focus on national security coverage.

“We all recognize the actions we are taking today will be painful – most of all, of course, for those of you who are directly affected, but for everybody,” Murray told staffers on the call. “I know that the reset is going to feel like a shock to the system and raise some questions for everybody.”

One editor who was laid off on Wednesday blamed the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, who remained silent during the morning conference call.

”Will Lewis’s legacy (already pretty bleak to begin with) will be having enabled Bezos to tank an American institution,” the staffer, who spoke anonymously, said, “And he wasn’t even brave enough to face his staffers more than once in his tenure at the Post. Embarrassing to say the least.”

The Washington Post is one of several legacy outlets grappling with shifts in readership and revenue, as major city newspapers like the Los Angeles Times struggle amid audiences’ growing reliance on social media for news.

Murray said the changes were meant to make the Post “more essential to people’s lives” in an increasingly crowded and competitive media landscape. Laid-off employees will remain on staff through April 10 without working and will receive six months of continued health insurance.