‘No one knows anything’: Washington Post staffers fear major cuts

The Washington Post has consistently produced high-quality, news cycle-leading reporting over the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic and unpredictable second administration. But that work has been produced under a cloud of uncertainty and rumors of widespread job cuts.

Those long-rumored cuts now appear to be close, with staffers expecting the ax to drop in early February – though nothing is certain. Inside the Post, staffers have tossed around estimates of potential cuts, with most exceeding 100, which would represent more than 10% of the newsroom – but no one really knows how widespread the cuts will be – or in fact if they will happen at all. The sections most likely to be affected by the cuts include sports, metro and foreign, according to staffers who spoke with the Guardian.

On Sunday morning, members of the foreign staff, concerned that the section could be decimated by cuts, sent a letter to billionaire owner Jeff Bezos urging him to change course and conveying the significance of international reporting for the institution — and for the public interest. Approximately 60 people signed the letter.

“We urge you to consider how the proposed layoffs will certainly lead us first to irrelevance – not the shared success that remains attainable,” the staffers wrote in the letter, reviewed by the Guardian but first reported by the New York Times. The signatories, which included many of the paper’s most prominent international journalists, said they are open to “finding ways to reduce our costs even further” in discussion with management – “while retaining as many jobs as we can”.

“We know what happens when newspapers slash their international sections: they lose reach and they lose relevance,” the staffers wrote.

On Friday night, in one of the first tangible actions suggesting how dire the paper’s financial situation might be, the managing editor, Kimi Yoshino, sent a memo to the sports department informing them that the Post would not be sending anyone to Italy to cover the upcoming Winter Olympics. “We realize this decision and its timing will be disappointing to many of you,” Yoshino wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Guardian. (The Post had already spent about $80,000 on accommodations, according to the Times, making the decision even more baffling for some at the paper.)

“It’s all very confusing and no one knows anything,” said one Post staffer who was not authorized to comment. “The anxiety is so sad.”

Several staffers said the persistent rumors about impending layoffs have been a distraction during an extremely challenging news cycle, with some suggesting that the Post should not be dragging out the process. “[It’s] safe to say most people aren’t thinking of filing right now,” a second Post staffer said.

The Post has not confirmed that any cuts are coming, and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about them. But it would be just the latest instance of cost-cutting at the publication, which has offered rounds of buyouts to employees in 2023 and 2025, and has also done targeted layoffs of specific teams. In fall 2024, the Post laid off 54 employees from the division responsible for its proprietary publishing software. In January 2025, the Post laid off about 4% of staffers – “fewer than 100 people” – as part of a strategy to “[transform] to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are.”

The newsroom, however, has largely been protected from layoffs, though many journalists accepted buyouts or left for other jobs – or new endeavors. All told, several hundred employees have left the company over the last few years, a significant level of turnover. (This reporter worked at the Post from 2020 to 2025.)

Despite the uncertainty, the newsroom has continued churning out ambitious pieces. The paper’s foreign coverage has included in-depth stories about the impact of USAID cuts on rape survivors in eastern Congo; about Russian missile strikes in Ukraine; and about a man who sailed around the world while battling gastrointestinal cancer.

Senior media figures have warned that cuts to the newsroom would have consequences. “Its stellar international reporting is part of the heart and soul of a great newspaper,” wrote David E Sanger, Times White House and national security correspondent, in a post on X Sunday. “And its international reporting not only makes Post readers smarter, it makes its competitors better – and thus American journalism better.”

Post veterans, and some current staffers, took to social media over the weekend to express alarm at the paper’s decision to not send anyone to cover the Olympics, considering some of the excellent coverage it has published in the past.

“I was the Washington Post’s Olympics beat writer from 1988-96,” wrote veteran sports columnist Christine Brennan in a post on X. “Tonight I’m thinking about my talented friends and colleagues at the Post who were getting ready to travel to Italy to tell the important stories of the Winter Olympics. This is just a stunning and awful development.”

“Holy shit,” wrote Mike Wise, a sports writer who worked at the Post from 2004 to 2015. “That sports section is where I found my voice, where I covered 4 Olympic Games – 2 of them the Winter Olympics. My colleagues were some of the best and brightest in all of journalism. Jesus.”

Dan Diamond, a White House reporter for the Post, called the news “difficult to read”.

Some current and former Post staffers who spoke with the Guardian conveyed a sense that Bezos, who acquired the Post in 2013 from family ownership, is missing in action. Notably, Bezos did not comment after FBI agents raided a Post reporter’s home on 14 January – though the Post’s top editor, Matt Murray, and publisher, Will Lewis, spoke out. (Emails sent to Bezos and a representative at Amazon were not returned.)

The rumored cuts also come at a time when the company that Bezos founded, Amazon, is reportedly spending lavishly to promote a documentary on Melania Trump that its MGM Studios had already paid $40m to acquire. The online publication Puck reported on Friday that the company additionally plans to spend $35m to market the film and bring it to theaters – though it is not expected to be a blockbuster.

Internal frustration has also centered on Lewis, who was brought in by Bezos in the fall of 2023 to help turn things around financially after a successful stint as publisher at the Wall Street Journal. Instead, the Post continues to lose a significant amount of money, leading to persistent questions about how long Lewis can last atop the paper – though Bezos has given no indication that a change is coming. A key endeavor championed by Lewis, the Post’s so-called “third newsroom” devoted to new initiatives and digital formats, largely disbanded last year.

“There is a creeping dread in the building that Bezos is dragging us to the edge from which there will be no easy return. Or, no return at all,” a third current Post staffer said, suggesting that Lewis’ job should be in jeopardy. “All of us in the newsroom have been diligently pursuing the most challenging stories, holding powerful people to account, and crafting rich, deep narratives, whether in text or video or any other format, and whether in metro, sports, foreign, politics or investigative. But what, exactly, has Will Lewis done?”