Report: Paper Cuts, WaPo Cutting 240 Jobs

The Washington Post is cutting about 240 jobs across the organization as it tries to offset challenges with digital subscriptions and advertising, according to a companywide email on Tuesday.

The NY Times reports Patty Stonesifer, the interim chief executive officer, said in the email to Post employees that the company hoped to achieve the cuts through voluntary buyouts. The buyouts will be offered to staff members this week. The company has about 2,500 employees in total, with more than 1,000 in its newsroom. The company declined to comment on how many jobs in the newsroom would be eliminated.

“Our prior projections for traffic, subscriptions and advertising growth for the past two years — and into 2024 — have been overly optimistic,” Ms. Stonesifer wrote in the email. She added: “The urgent need to invest in our top growth priorities brought us to the difficult conclusion that we need to adjust our cost structure now.”

Inbox: Washington Post is reducing its workforce by approximately 240 positions pic.twitter.com/GFVdGZw2pa

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) October 10, 2023

The move is the latest indication of The Post’s business struggles. The company, which is owned by the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is on track to lose roughly $100 million this year.

The number of subscriptions at The Post has declined in recent years — it now has roughly 2.5 million subscribers, down from a high of three million subscribers at the end of 2020. The Post has also struggled in the face of an industrywide decline in digital advertising.

Bezos, who paid $250 million for the newspaper in 2013, has previously said he wants the publication to be profitable.

Some of The Post’s troubles have been placed at the feet of Fred Ryan, the longtime chief executive and publisher, who announced his resignation in June. Ryan, a former Reagan aide and Politico executive who joined The Post in 2014, oversaw abundant growth in the company during the first five years of his tenure. The newsroom roughly doubled in size and subscriptions soared.