Washington Post Announces Major Layoffs, Cutting Nearly One Third of Staff

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon, began a widespread round of layoffs on Wednesday that are expected to decimate the organization's sports, local news, and international coverage.

Roughly one-third of the company was affected by the layoffs, according to a Washington Post spokesperson. "The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company," the Post said in a statement.

The cuts come amid a sharp circulation decline. The newspaper's 2025 paid average daily circulation stood at 97,000, with roughly 160,000 on Sundays—a steep drop from its 250,000 average daily circulation in 2020, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

Among the impacted journalists are Amazon beat reporter Caroline O'Donovan and Cairo Bureau Chief Claire Parker, along with Ishaan Tharoor, son of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, and the rest of the Post's Middle East correspondents, editors and many more.

Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013 for $250 million (approximately ₹2,100 crore) from the Graham family. Last year, the Post cut 4% of staff from its advertising, marketing, and print departments, though those earlier cuts did not affect the newsroom.

In recent years, The Post has clashed with some of its journalists, who openly criticized Bezos after the newspaper decided not to endorse a candidate in the November 2024 U.S. presidential election, Reuters reported. That decision led to more than 200,000 people cancelling their digital subscriptions.

"Today's layoffs at the Washington Post are a devastating setback for the scores of individual journalists affected and for the journalism profession," National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. said in a statement.