Les Carpenter was in Milan to cover the Winter Olympics last Wednesday when he got an email notifying him he’d been laid off by the Washington Post.
Ukraine correspondent Lizzie Johnson was “in the middle of a warzone,” as she put it, when she got the news.
Most of the 300-plus journalists laid off were in more comfortable surroundings, after management asked staffers to stay home and Zoom into executive editor Matt Murray’s announcement about “significant actions across the company.”
The cuts gutted sports and foreign coverage, metro, and books. Photographers were let go. A signature podcast was put on ice. It was a bloodbath, a stunning purge of institutional knowledge, talent and experience.
With owner Jeff Bezos and CEO and publisher Will Lewis absent, Murray was left to pitch the culling as a “strategic reset.” It wasn’t until Saturday that Bezos and Lewis issued public statements, after Lewis stepped down following a rocky two-year tenure amid widespread criticism. “It leaves some small hope that we’ve hit rock bottom,” one Post staffer said of Lewis’ exit. “But I’ve thought that before.”
Chief financial officer Jeff D’Onofrio will serve as interim CEO as the paper charts its path forward. Sure, the Post will lose less money with hundreds fewer journalists, but it’s hard to see how the paper – which still has many excellent reporters and editors — will be a better overall product in the short or long term.
“I am crushed that so many of my beloved colleagues have lost their jobs and our readers have been given less news and sound analysis,” Bob Woodward said. “They deserve more.” While Woodward didn’t mention Bezos by name, Carl Bernstein, the other half of the legendary Watergate duo, was more cutting in his remarks.
“Today’s owner of The Washington Post is one of the five richest people on the planet,” Bernstein said. “His responsibilities ought to be, above all, to enlarge those journalistic and democratic possibilities: and not, as we have witnessed this past year at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, to curtail and demean them.”
The same morning as the Post downsizing, the New York Times announced a strong fourth quarter, pulling in more than $800 million in revenue and adding 450,000 digital subscribers. With a whopping 12.7 million total subscribers, the paper is closing in on its goal of 15 million by the end of 2027.
The contrast was stark. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien touted the Times’ diversified portfolio – Games, Cooking, The Athletic — on an investor call playing out during Murray’s grim Zoom gathering. She spoke about how the Times will continue to “thoughtfully invest, making what we do more rare and more valuable to more people.”
As the Times trumpets growth and the Post goes into survival mode, many top-tier journalists are looking for work. Some ex-Post journalists have already set up shop on Substack, as others seek assignments.
“Picked up my notebook this morning — full of notes from a recent reporting trip — and got hit with another wave of grief over all the stories that now won’t be told,” Johnson wrote on X, adding that she’s aiming to work in Kyiv “should anyone need a dogged, empathetic reporter.”
Carpenter stayed in Milan to finish his Olympics assignment as the Post guild negotiates its settlement with the paper, writing a profile Friday on U.S. figure skating star Ilia Malinin.
“People are still paying for the paper,” Carpenter told the CBC shortly after getting the news. “They’re owed something.”
Searching for Jeff Bezos
When Washington Post foreign correspondents pleaded with owner Jeff Bezos last month to preserve global coverage, they reminded him of the commitment he made upon buying the paper in 2013.
“You can be profitable and shrinking. And that’s a survival strategy, but it ultimately leads to irrelevance, at best,” Bezos said at his first staff town hall. “And at worst, it leads to extinction.”
Now Post journalists are living out that grim reality while Bezos is missing in action.
Check out my column on Bezos’ path from Washington Post savior to executioner.
While the owner’s absence has fueled speculation he’s no longer committed, sources close to Bezos told TheWrap that he isn’t selling the paper and believes he’s saving it. Executive Editor Matt Murray has suggested as much, telling CNN that Bezos “wants the Post to be a bigger, relevant, thriving institution.”
In the midst of this leadership vacuum, journalists, news executives and media watchers started filling the void to assess what went wrong at the Post — and how it should move forward.
My look at the rolling conversation: Everyone Has Advice for Jeff Bezos. Is He Listening?
Plus: Washington Post Staffers, Alums Flay ‘Tone Deaf’ CEO Will Lewis for Pre-Super Bowl Appearance
Washington Post Editor Defends Shuttering Paper’s Sports Desk
While ‘Melania’ Gets Millions
As Bezos cut resources for the Post, Amazon spent a reported $35 million to promote a Melania Trump documentary after already dropping $40 million for the rights.
The film, which William Bibbiani dubbed “a tedious, criminally shallow propaganda puff piece,” surely helped curry favor with the president, but is an outlier at a time when political documentaries, as Jeremy Fuster finds, have become an “endangered species in theaters.”
Fuster writes:
“More liberal and progressive documentary filmmakers have struggled to find funding over the last several years, often settling for streaming releases rather than theatrical bows — especially after the shuttering of major doc player Participant Media in 2024.”
“The chatter surrounding the critically reviled ‘Melania’ comes as the documentary market overall is in a slump, with funding drying up and studios largely buying only true crime, celebrity or sports docs. It’s a stark contrast to when Michael Moore’s George W. Bush takedown ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ grossed over $220 million in 2004, or even the 2010s when political docs were more prevalent.”
Bari’s brand — and bind
Bari Weiss’ personal brand is strongly tied to opposition to “cancel culture” and progressives excess, or “woke” politics. But is that now also CBS News’ brand?
As Sharon Waxman and I reported on Monday:
A battle has broken out between Paramount corporate and CBS News’ news chief Bari Weiss over cutting ties with new contributor Peter Attia, TheWrap has learned.
Weiss insists she does not want to cut ties with Attia over his links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sees it as giving in to the mob. Senior Paramount executives see this as an HR matter and believe that Attia cannot be giving expert advice on a broadcast network.
“It’s Bari versus everyone right now on Attia,” said an individual with knowledge of the internal discussion.
Attia has apologized for his “embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible” exchanges.
While “60 Minutes” pulled an Attia segment in a rerun airing Sunday against the Super Bowl, Weiss appears determined to keep him as a contributor.
Another facet of Weiss’ brand is talking straight and uttering uncomfortable truths. But in this instance, the CBS News editor in chief chose silence.
Murdoch’s monster
Corbin Bolies caught up with Gabriel Sherman, author of the new book “Bonfire of the Murdochs,” about 94-year-old mogul Rupert Murdoch’s decades-long quest for power and profit — and his decision to cede the Fox platform to Donald Trump.
“He’s, on one level, an incredibly compelling figure, one of the most influential figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries,” Sherman said. But, the author caveats, “Rupert’s ability to rationalize and compartmentalize ethical and moral failings for the sake of profit, I think, is one of the most destructive things that has happened to politics around the world.”
It is an appropriate time to assess Murdoch’s legacy, as Trump’s second administration barrels through constitutional norms and takes aim at press freedoms. It was Murdoch, after all, who helped empower him.
“Many people describe Rupert as a conservative, and yes, he is, generally speaking, very much to the right,” Sherman said. “He believes in low taxes and a very minimal social safety net. But the bigger ideology that transcends politics for him is profit. Capitalism is the ultimate ideology that he subscribes to, and that is the simplest way to understand how he caved to Trump.”
Check out Bolies’ full interview: Author Gabriel Sherman on Murdoch’s Media Empire: ‘A Monster He No Longer Controls’
Also on TheWrap
Corbin Bolies talked to MS NOW’s Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels about their new podcast, “Clock It,” and why culture is central to covering politics today.
“The reality is that culture is leading politics, and this has manifested itself in many different ways,” Sanders Townsend told TheWrap. That’s especially the case these days as Donald Trump, a reality TV-star turned president, “has been chasing the legitimacy of the culture his entire life,” she noted.
MS NOW Hosts Eugene Daniels and Symone Sanders Townsend Plan to ‘Clock’ Trump’s Assault on Culture
Hoda Kotb Steps In for Savannah Guthrie on ‘Today’ as Search Continues for Missing Mom Nancy
Warner Bros. CEO Takes Netflix Deal Pitch Directly to European, UK Regulators
Disney Flourished Under Powerhouse Duos Before. Can D’Amaro and Walden Do It Again?
What I’m reading (WaPo edition)
“The Murder of the Washington Post” (Ashley Parker, The Atlantic)
“Death of a Sports Section” (Bryan Curtis, The Ringer)
“You Can’t Kill Swagger” (Sally Jenkin, The Atlantic)
“How Jeff Bezos Brought down the Washington Post (Rush Marcus, The New Yorker)
“He Was Laid Off at The Washington Post After Working There 60 Years (Eric Wemple, the New York Times)
