Legacy News Outlet Tells Hundreds To Work From Home On Wednesday, Cuts 300 Jobs In Zoom Meeting
The Washington Post stunned its staff Wednesday by laying off nearly 300 employees in a surprise wave of cuts delivered via a company-wide Zoom call. The paper eliminated several editorial sections outright, including the Sports department, the Books section, and the Post Reports podcast.
Employees were told to work remotely and join a midday virtual meeting for what was described only as an announcement of “significant actions.” That vague description quickly turned into job losses across multiple departments — from foreign bureaus to investigative teams and race coverage.
Among those laid off was sports columnist Barry Svrluga, who shared the moment the department was axed. “First, we will be closing the Sports department in its current form,” he quoted editor Matt Murray as saying. Others shared their dismissal in real time on X, including Yeganeh Torbati, Caroline O’Donovan, Geoffrey Fowler, and Will Hobson.
Race and ethnicity reporter Emmanuel Felton said he was also let go, calling it an “ideological” move. “Six months ago, they said race coverage drove subscriptions. This wasn’t financial — it was ideological,” he claimed.
Foreign coverage took a major blow. Reports indicate the outlet shuttered its Jerusalem and Ukraine bureaus, alongside cuts to key positions across Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Former editor Robert McCartney and Asia Society Vice President Evan Feigenbaum both blasted the moves as a dangerous narrowing of American journalism at a time of global upheaval.
The layoffs have sparked backlash both inside and outside the newsroom. Critics say it’s a predictable end to a paper that lost its way, with declining revenue and editorial missteps. “Over the last decade: major corrections, drama, lawsuits, and plummeting circulation,” noted commentator Mark Hemingway. “Stop acting like the layoffs are shocking.”
Others blamed the collapse on the paper’s editorial shift. Clay Travis argued that The Washington Post became beholden to its left-wing subscriber base during the Trump years and failed to pivot back. “They made their business contingent on far-left subscribers who hated Trump,” he wrote. “When Bezos tried to center the paper again, the readers revolted.”
The decision to gut international reporting drew especially harsh criticism from longtime media observers. Feigenbaum summed it up this way: “What an utterly perfect encapsulation of where we have arrived: a historic American newspaper no longer sees any value in covering the world.”