'Shock to the system': Audio reveals how a top Washington Post editor explained the paper's sweeping layoffs

• The Washington Post cut reporters across its newsroom on Wednesday as part of a major reset.
• Top editor Matt Murray told staffers that every newsroom department would be impacted to some degree.
• The changes would "feel like a shock to the system," Murray said during a company Zoom call.

On Wednesday morning, after weeks of anticipation of layoffs, Washington Post staffers dialed into a Zoom call led by executive editor Matt Murray.

"Today will be a difficult day," he said, according to an audio recording of the call obtained by Business Insider.

The top editor told workers to expect big changes ahead that would hit every corner of the newsroom and "feel like a shock to the system."

"Today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people's lives in what has become a more crowded, competitive, and complicated media landscape," Murray said during the 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."

Later that morning, the company took an ax to its newsroom, cutting journalists across coverage areas like sports, books, and foreign affairs, according to company materials reviewed by Business Insider.

The job cuts included hundreds of workers, according to a spokesperson for the Washington Baltimore News Guild, which represents the newsroom's union.

The company, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is shrinking its international footprint, merging editing desks and its art team, and restructuring its D.C. metro coverage, Murray said during the call. Its daily news podcast "Post Reports" is also shuttering amid the changes.

Two staffers told Business Insider that the layoffs were far worse than what they expected.

The "substantial newsroom reductions" were designed to cut costs and refocus the company's work on topics that "demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact," Murray told staffers in a separate memo. Those priority areas will include politics, national affairs, national security, and other forces "shaping our future" like science and business, Murray wrote.

On the call, Murray also mentioned artificial intelligence as a disruptor that could impact the Post going forward.

"We're still almost on just the doorstep of the dramatic changes that AI is going to bring to all of us," he said.

A spokesperson for the Post described the changes as a "significant restructuring" 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."

Read the full newsroom memo from Murray below:

Dear All,

As we shared in our live stream earlier, the company is taking actions today to place The Washington Post on a stronger footing and better position us in this rapidly changing era of new technologies and evolving user habits.

These moves include substantial newsroom reductions impacting nearly all news departments. For the immediate future, we will concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact and that resonate with readers: politics, national affairs, people, power and trends; national security in DC and abroad; forces shaping the future including science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business; journalism that empowers people to take action, from advice to wellness; revelatory investigations; and what's capturing attention in culture, online, and in daily life.

We will meet with leaders in each department today and tomorrow to review the impacts on their teams.

Today's news is painful. These are difficult actions. We are proud of, and grateful for, the many valued colleagues whose talents and passion have contributed to The Post over many years.

But we take them with clarity of purpose. The need has never been more urgent to reposition The Post. A more flexible, sustainable model will help us better navigate unprecedented volatility, competition, technological change, news-consumption habits, and cost pressure.

As you know, we have grappled with financial challenges for some time. They have affected us in multiple rounds of cost cuts and buyouts, along with periodic constraints on other kinds of spending.

We have concluded that the company's structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product. This restructure will help to secure our future in service of our journalistic mission and provide us stability moving forward.

We are far from alone in reevaluating our model or rethinking how we operate. The ecosystem of news and information, on- and off-platform, is changing radically. News consumers enjoy more variety, voices, platforms, and options than ever before. In just the last five years, multiple startups—and even individuals—have created meaningful products that draw attention and generate impact at low cost.

Platforms like Search that shaped the previous era of digital news, and which once helped The Post thrive, are in serious decline. Our organic search has fallen by nearly half in the last three years. And we are still in the early days of AI-generated content, which is drastically reshaping user experiences and expectations.

We are producing much great journalism of which we can be proud. As we discuss every day in the news meeting, some of our best work attracts readers and generates subscriptions and engagement.

Unfortunately, some does not. Some areas, such as video, haven't kept up with changes in how consumers get news and information. Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years. And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.

If we are to thrive, not just endure, we must reinvent our journalism and our business model with renewed ambition. We already have taken important and, in some cases, long overdue steps toward reinvention—creating the Print desk, transforming digital workflows, and embedding Audience Strategy editors in every department. Today's moves will put us in position to find and develop better ways to connect Post journalism to news consumers in the ways they want it.

From this foundation, we aim to build on what is working, and grow with discipline and intent, to experiment, to measure and deepen what resonates with customers.

We can't be everything to everyone. But we must be indispensable where we compete. That means continually asking why a story matters, who it serves and how it gives people a clearer understanding of the world and an advantage in navigating it.

Some of you have heard me ask how we can shrink the gap between some of what we create in our newsroom during the day and what we — and our children, families, and friends — consume at night.

Today's actions are about addressing those questions, forcefully, to reinvent The Washington Post for this new era. This work is difficult, but it is essential. The Post is a necessary institution, and it must remain relevant.

Even amid challenges, The Washington Post retains great strengths. We have a deep pool of talented journalists and leaders, strong standards, institutional backing, a proud legacy, and millions of customers.

Most important, our central purpose remains as it ever was: To produce riveting and distinct journalism of the highest caliber that breaks news, explains the world with authority and fairness, empowers people with knowledge, and helps them live better-informed lives.

Matt