Downfall: Washington Post Lays Off 300 Staffers, Shuttering Sports Section and Gutting Foreign Desk as Once-Mighty Publisher Bleeds Subscribers and Money

The embattled Washington Post is laying off more than 300 employees—about a third of its already shrunken staff—as it guts sports, local news, and international coverage to cut costs and, its executives hope, boost readership.

Executive Editor Matt Murray told staff on a Wednesday morning call that the layoffs are part of a "broad strategic reset with a significant staff reduction," as the paper attempts to reposition itself in what he described as an increasingly "crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape," Semafor’s Max Tani reported. Murray admitted that the Post had lost too much money and had failed to make itself essential to readers.

The layoffs are the latest blow to the Post, which is enduring a bad hangover after going all in on an anti-Trump editorial strategy during President Donald Trump's first term, using the marketing slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness." Paid subscriptions surged, and the publisher almost doubled the size of its newsroom to a peak of about 1,000 people in early 2021. But when President Joe Biden took power, interest in the "resistance" flagged, subscription revenue plummeted, and the Post has been losing money and cutting staff. Reader interest has also plummeted from a high of 110 million unique monthly users in January 2021 to 62 million in January 2026. Meanwhile, the New York Times, which the Post has long aspired to be considered an equal to, has pulled far ahead. Back in Washington, Politico has dethroned the Post as the leader in political news coverage.

Wednesday's shakeup includes ending sports coverage "in its current form," closing the Books section, suspending the paper's flagship Post Reports podcast, and gutting its foreign news staff. Murray said some sports reporters will be retained but reassigned to features, where they will cover athletics primarily as a "cultural and societal phenomenon." In total, the company is laying off about 30 percent of its employees, the New York Times reported.

The Post will also overhaul its Metro section, cutting staff and reorganizing beats to maintain a reduced but "healthy" presence for local print subscribers. Politics and government will remain the paper’s largest desk and central to its mission, alongside national news, Murray said.

The newsroom plans to emphasize "futures" coverage—science, health, medicine, technology, climate, and business—along with advice journalism, health and wellness, and other national features.

Owner Jeff Bezos hired Will Lewis in 2023 as publisher and CEO to make the paper profitable. In a 2024 conference with the Times, Bezos said, "We saved the Washington Post once, and we’re going to save it a second time."

In 2023, about 200 Post reporters took a buyout offer amid recriminations over Lewis's leadership and fury at Bezos from the reliably liberal staff. Bezos blocked publication in 2024 of an editorial the left-wing opinion department had written endorsing Kamala Harris. Bezos then decreed, in February 2025, that the opinion section would pivot to favoring "free markets," prompting much of the opinion team to flee for the exits. Far left columnist Karen Attiah, who did not take the buyout, was fired in September 2025 after she made offensive posts on Bluesky, the liberal alternative to Elon Musk's X, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder.

In the last few weeks, as layoffs loomed, Post staffers expressed concern about the paper's direction. "I’ve never experienced such a feeling of dread," one employee told Status’s Oliver Darcy. A former manager called Bezos’s leadership "a business failure on a colossal level." Staffers even considered enlisting celebrities like Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks to get Bezos to reverse course.

On the Post’s Slack, another employee said, "I was just thinking the other day that I wished MacKenzie [Scott] had gotten us in the divorce," referring to Bezos’s ex-wife.

"This is a difficult time," Murray told the staff on Wednesday. "We all want to save it. We all want to create a Washington Post that can grow and thrive again."

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