When leadership at The Washington Post laid off more than 300 journalists last month, Post Local was among the hardest-hit sections. Successive rounds of cuts had already shrunk the section down to around 40 reporters and editors. (In the early 2000s, the metro department had around 200 journalists.) But the latest layoffs left the section with around a dozen journalists, a severe blow to an institution that had remained home to some of D.C.'s most ambitious local reporting.
The Washington Post is set to cut 33 of the 108 jobs at its Flatiron District office, with the layoffs scheduled to take effect by May 8, 2026, according to a state unemployment filing. The move will eliminate roughly one third of the staff at the local outpost, which operates out of a prewar building between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
The biggest tech story dominating Washington right now is, incidentally, a media story. Last week, shortly after The Washington Post laid off 400 staffers and closed many of its desks, and before its absentee CEO Will Lewis got summarily shoved out, I wrote a column trying to figure out whether there was even a cynical, self-interested reason that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos continued to own the Post: Was it to support journalism, make money, or suck up to Donald Trump?
The Rebootings Brian Morrissey delivered the sharpest indictment. He listed the proximate causes editorial drift, scale addiction, poor leadership then dismissed them: He bought this asset 13 years ago and has had more than enough time to figure out a path. Morrissey compared Bezos unfavorably to Elon Musk: Say what you want about Elon Musk, he'd have taken his sleeping bag out a while ago. Bezos, by contrast, acted like he acquired a series of car dealerships after watching some passive income influencer's YouTube videos.
This week, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Juliette Kayyem discuss the juxtaposition between the devastating layoffs at The Washington Post and the exorbitant price owner Jeff Bezos and Amazon paid for the Melania movie, this week's ominous foreshadowing of the Trump administration's real threats to the 2026 elections with election law expert Nate Persily, and why the Clintons are facing deposition in House Epstein investigations.
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Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special. The Post has survived for nearly 150 years, evolving from a hometown family newspaper into an indispensable national institution, and a pillar of the democratic system. But if Bezos and Lewis continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File The sports world came to together amid rumors that the Washington Post may do away with its entire sports section as part of a round of layoffs. On Monday, Puck senior correspondent Dylan Byers reported that the Post's newsroom was going to be hit with massive layoffs. According to Byers, those layoffs could see the sports desk shuttered entirely. He added that the foreign desk could also see heavy losses.
