‘There’s No Vision for Why It Should Exist’
The ostensible reason for the layoffs is that the Post, like many other newspapers, is losing money. But unlike other newspapers, the Post is also in the midst of a demoralizing destruction of its brand that has alienated hundreds of thousands of subscribers and left even its staff unsure of what the paper is trying to do, both journalistically and businesswise. “I’m increasingly finding it hard to justify the cuts from a journalistic perspective,” said one staffer. “Of course, financially, the Post is in a deep hole, and I understand that. But some of that hole, if not a lot of it, is because of Jeff Bezos.”
The Post was once known for its independent accountability journalism, dating back to the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and running all the way through to January 6. It was also once known for being the foremost authority on goings-on in the nation’s capital. Now it no longer has a clear identity, a crucial component for any paper’s success, whether it’s the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. The Post finds itself in this no-man’s-land largely because of a series of editorial and business decisions made outside the newsroom at the highest level of the company — most notably, Bezos’s 11th-hour decision to pull the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024, which led to 250,000 digital readers canceling their subscriptions in protest of Bezos’s apparent kowtowing to Trump.
The paper has tried out a new internal mission statement, “Riveting Storytelling for All of America,” to effectively replace the Trump 1.0–era motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Bezos stunned the newsroom last year by remaking the ideology of the “Opinions” section “in support and defense” of “personal liberties and free markets” — a move that was interpreted as another sop to the Trump administration. “Opinions” editor Adam O’Neal essentially cleaned house upon arrival, turning the section into a MAGA-friendly libertarian outpost largely free of liberals and progressives. Some of the paper’s most-prized reporters and editors, having lost faith in the Post’s journalistic mission and business, left for rival publications, further damaging the paper. And as the latest round of layoffs loomed, Bezos hit Haute Couture Week in Paris and attended a private screening of the documentary Melania at the White House — a movie Amazon spent $40 million to produce.
Under Bezos’s leadership, CEO Will Lewis has floated a bunch of proposals to make the company profitable, few of which so far resemble anything people might actually want to buy. Meanwhile, he has blamed the Post’s journalists for their plight, infamously declaring at a town hall in 2024, “Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.” Now, executive editor Matt Murray, who was installed by Lewis, is singing the same tune, at least privately, telling a staffer recently that their journalism is just not resonating with readers, according to a source familiar with the discussion. “It’s like someone who slices your Achilles and then asks you why you’re limping,” one reporter said.
“When people were deciding which subscriptions they could live without, the Post was an easy cut. And then Jeff made it a lot easier with his decisions. And now you’re left with something that’s basically on life support,” said a former desk head. “There’s no vision for why it should exist or why I need a subscription to the Post versus another organization.”
There were questions about the Post’s long-term strategy long before Lewis arrived. “We were profitable in the first Trump administration. We had a loyal readership that was really committed to the work that we were doing and invested in the ‘democracy dies in darkness’ of it all,” said one reporter. “Then Biden won, news fatigue set in, and we had not diversified our portfolio.” Despite the post-Trump hangover, Murray’s predecessor, Sally Buzbee, added more than 150 roles in her first year to strengthen the paper’s coverage outside national politics and investigations. She built climate and wellness teams and two breaking-news hubs in Seoul and London. But the Post “overshot on expense,” interim CEO Patty Stonesifer told employees in October 2023, ahead of the largest staff reduction — 240 voluntary buyouts — since Bezos bought the paper in 2013. The Post ended up losing $77 million that year.
Lewis’s leadership team has floated a lofty goal of attracting 200 million subscribers in meetings with senior Post editors. But Lewis’s proposals to fix the Post have not provided clarity or inspired confidence. In January 2024, he debuted his “Fix it, build it, scale it” approach, telling Semafor’s Ben Smith that “social, AI, and personalization are the next opportunities.” That spring, he rolled out a more formal plan, focused on diversifying revenue streams through flexible payment options to target “untapped audiences,” additional subscription tiers à la Axios and Politico (Post Pro, Post Plus, and Membership), and further integration of artificial intelligence into Post products. A new team led by chief communications officer Kathy Baird would focus on marketing the Post’s star talents.
Baird left the Post a year later — part of a pattern of fits and starts for Lewis’s rebuilding project.
In June 2024, Lewis announced the formation of a “third newsroom” focused on service journalism and social media, among other innovations. The third newsroom would be “an industry-defining moment for us,” Lewis said. Some six months later, that effort was formally introduced as WP Ventures, led by Krissah Thompson, a beloved newsroom leader. A year later, Thompson took a voluntary buyout.
The Post then announced that Ventures would pivot, becoming a more commercial operation that would operate outside the Post’s newsroom and focus on “creator-driven experimentation.” (It doesn’t help that Lewis’s business proposals are all encased in this sort of impenetrable corporatespeak.) Samantha Henig, a veteran in the journalism-product space, would lead this new line of business. But in August 2025, the Post hired former Axios editor-in-chief Sara Kehaulani Goo to be the Post’s “president, Creator Network,” in which she’d be “building a new business with creators through an innovative commercial model.” In October, Henig left the Post.
Last June, the Post launched WP Incubator, an “initiative for building cutting-edge AI products and new media business models.” Out of that came Ripple, a program licensing opinion pieces from other newspapers, Substack writers, and other third parties that began in December. The Post also debuted an AI podcast feature that allows users to create their own personalized shows. The product, which was released despite a number of internal-testing issues, has been rife with errors, including invented quotes and inserted bias, as Semafor’s Max Tani reported.
Another new product, Post Intelligence, seems to be faring a bit better. Launched last July, it is a professional service for high-level executives, offering them specialized briefings and private meetings with thought leaders. The team of 15 staffers, I’m told, met its revenue goals for last year, even if it is not yet profitable.
Few people feel these ideas will work without a clear journalistic project at the business’s core. And the layoffs might only exacerbate the newsroom’s problems. “What’s the plan after this?” a former Post reporter wondered. “You cut however many hundreds of people to solve the fact that you’re still losing lots of money. Then what?”
One thing Bezos’s Post won’t be doing anytime soon is resurrecting the paper’s old model of turning a profit. A current staffer said, “It’s incomprehensible to me that we have Trump back in office, we have the power and influence of the Washington Post, and we still can’t figure out how to make money.”