Breaking News, Washington Post Edition

Today in Media Disruption came the explosive purge at the Washington Post when one of the country’s great newspapers announced massive layoffs – believed to be approximately 300 people, one-third of its entire staff – and kicked off an enormous restructuring effort that, I guarantee, no one, least of all gajillionaire owner and Amazon ayatollah Jeff Bezos and those he instructed to carry out his orders, have any idea how to pull off or how it will play out. 

The Post will eliminate its sports department, its books department, its news podcast and will severely cut back foreign bureaus and even local and investigative reporting. Every department took a big hit. All Middle East reporters and editors were turfed, as were correspondents in Iran, New Delhi and Ukraine. Sports reportedly will be covered as a “cultural phenomenon,” whatever that means. 

Executive editor Matt Murray informed staff on a Wednesday morning Zoom call, then later circulated a memo that any line editor would reject, with prejudice, for its obfuscation, double-speak and pusillanimous tone. He began: 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. 

As Murray isn’t stupid, he’s certainly aware that the Post already does all of that, and that gutting entire departments and slicing coverage in no way puts a news organization on “stronger footing.” No, the reasons for Wednesday’s purge are contained deeper in the memo – burying the lede, as they say in the news biz. 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. 

Deep down, still this fucking guy

A diminished product “providing stability.” Sure. Do go on: 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. 

Of course, this is all about money and costs. The Post has been hemorrhaging subscribers and readers for many months, not the least because of actions by Bezos. Legendary former Post editor Marty Baron, who worked under Bezos for eight years after he bought the paper in 2013, acknowledged the paper’s financial issues but also called out his old boss in a statement Wednesday that read, in part: “The Post’s challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top — from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity. 

Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands. The owner, in a note to readers, wrote that he aimed to boost trust in The Post. The effect was something else entirely: Subscribers lost trust in his stewardship and, notwithstanding the newsroom’s stellar journalism, The Post overall. Similarly, many leading journalists at The Post lost confidence in Bezos, and jumped to other news organizations. They also, in effect, were driven away. Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. 

This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.” Perhaps a suitable way to describe the Post amputation is: Shocking but not surprising. Newspapers and organizations have slashed staff and costs for years, sometimes shuttering entirely, a practice that accelerated when they were no longer run by families and news people but by corporations and business interests more wedded to profits than public service. 

Bezos didn’t buy the Post because of a soft spot for the First Amendment, but because he believed it to be a promising business move. Sure, there’s the prestige and ego boost of owning the outlet that printed the Pentagon Papers, busted open Watergate and is respected around the world. In the end, however, a man who can afford whatever money the paper loses without sweating a drop chose to further diminish his own product for bottom line reasons. Businesses make decisions all the time about the quality of their products or services. Maybe they use cheaper ingredients or farm out customer service to call centers, in the name of maximizing profits. But a newspaper’s sole currency is credibility; once credibility is compromised, it doesn’t come back. 

Again, giving Murray the benefit of the doubt, he knows that it’s not possible to “reinvent” journalism. Changing times may mean re-examining how stories are presented. New technology may assist the process. Maybe priorities shift, or reporting is pared back or expanded in certain areas. Maybe voices are added or subtracted, either in the storytelling or editing. But journalism requires pretty much the same formula as a hundred years ago: people asking questions, doing research, explaining how and why something matters. Though maybe Murray is on to something, as the new Washington Post writes about Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels and Caps’ all-timer Alex Ovechkin and Wizards guard Trae Young as cultural phenomena. Hasn’t been tried.