Bezos Guts The Washington Post

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. From The New York Times, Im Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. [THEME MUSIC] When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post more than a decade ago, journalists inside and outside of the newsroom were cautiously optimistic. Maybe he could revitalize one of Americas most storied news organizations. A brutal blow to one of journalisms most legendary brands. The Washington Post is laying off One third of its staff across all departments. Those hopes, though, were dashed on Wednesday when the paper laid off more than a third of its newsroom, affecting nearly every section of the paper. The newspapers Books Department will close. Its Post Reports podcast suspended. Its entire sports department and most of its overseas journalists. Today, I talked to my colleague Erik Wemple about what went wrong and what comes next. Its Thursday, February 5. Erik Wemple, welcome to The Daily. Thank you. Thank you for having me. A lot of people listening to our show today probably have some kind of awareness that people have been talking in really apocalyptic terms about the state of affairs of The Washington Post, and specifically the layoffs that happened on Wednesday, which were described by many people as, frankly, a bloodbath. And you, Erik, you are not only a media reporter at The New York Times, but you also were a media columnist at The Washington Post. And this is why we wanted to talk to you today, because of this unique vantage point that you have. So just to start, tell us what we know about these cuts. So this is an extremely grim outcome at The Washington Post, a dark day, as many people have been saying. We knew the layoffs were coming. But they hit and they hit with a tremendous amount of force. And that analysis doesnt need to extend that much further than just saying that 300 people, who practice journalism for the benefit of American civic life, have lost their jobs, maybe lost their careers and their livelihood at least for some time. So it doesnt really have to go beyond that analysis. But there is another dimension to it, which is that this is The Washington Post. And The Washington Post right now is playing an enormously important role in covering an administration for whom no head count is really sufficient. So thats what I would say about the enormity of these events. What do we at this point at about 3:50 in the afternoon on Wednesday, about who was laid off? Well, we know that the cuts took about 300 positions out of the newsroom. And this was a newsroom that was at about 800, in terms of its headcount. It had crested up above 1,100 several years ago, I think, maybe in 2021, around then. And since then, it has been an exercise in retrenchment. The layoffs landed disproportionately on the metro desk, the sports desk and the international coverage. Those are three areas that had been rumored to be hit in recent weeks, recent months. And indeed, thats what happened. It feels like there are many different things happening at once at The Washington Post. Youve got a tough business. Youve got a billionaire owner. Youve got an entire industry struggling to figure out how to make it in the age of the internet and social media. So which of these narratives helps explain why a third of the newsroom was laid off on Wednesday? The question of whats happening to The Post is a little bit later. Number one, The Washington Post is a legacy regional newspaper. And as a legacy regional newspaper, it has business model problems, very clear ones that relate to the drying up of revenue streams. And thats across the industry. Add on to that Jeff Bezos, in the past couple of years, has made some missteps that have led to the desertion of subscribers and business model problems for The Washington Post that really dont come with the standard issue crisis that weve seen over the past few decades. So thats how I put it. And I think that thats one of the reasons why this is such a big story. I want to rewind a little bit and go back to 2013, the year that Jeff Bezos purchased The Post. And at the time, people, both inside and I think outside journalism, were extremely optimistic that this guy was going to basically ride in on a white horse and infuse the place with cash and help it realize its ambitions. So bring us back to that moment and tell us how things evolved from there. So when Jeff Bezos those bought The Washington Post, he was buying, essentially, the same sort of paper that we had seen fail in a lot of markets in the United States, which is to say, a struggling paper, a paper that had lost staff, a paper that had lost a little bit of vigor and a paper that had lost a fair bit of morale. [INTRIGUING MUSIC] I mean, it was still producing very good journalism. But it was definitely not at the top of its game. It was a newspaper in need of investment, especially since the demands of the time were to figure out new ways of putting reporting and content online, which was, frankly, a very expensive thing to do. Right. So Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post for $250 million, basically in the summer-fall of 2013. And Bezos had this idea that this was a lofty goal, certainly a worthwhile pursuit, to turn this sort of distressed property with a lot of social value, a lot of civic value. Turn it around, make it profitable. The newspaper industry needs new approaches. And Jeff Bezos may be the guy to do that. We hope so at The Washington Post. And there were a lot of eager people who were really happy and excited to be working with him. And I think that was a powerful combination for a new owner. I remember reading a quote from Jeff Bezos at some point that said something to the effect of when he was old, one of the things hed be proudest as part of his legacy was The Washington Post and helping to turn that place around. And I remember reading that and I remember the sense of optimism that you are describing. But I also remember, Erik, that there were some concerns about editorial independence, concerns about, what does it mean for a person that rich, that influential, who has that many different business interests, to come in and take control of a newspaper? There were absolutely concerns about editorial independence. I mean, anytime you have a news organization owned by a businessman of such proportions, youre going to have really, really legitimate conflict-of-interest concerns. But Bezos, from the very beginning, made it clear to news leaders at The Washington Post that he would not interfere in the coverage. And essentially said, with respect to Amazon and other interests of his, other companies and so on and so forth, whatever he would do, have at it. Cover it the way you would any other company. He said all the right things to a group of journalists. Thats right. So what did he do next? So next, after buying the place, he invested in the place. He invested in the politics coverage. He invested in the international coverage. He invested in the technology. The Posts website was sort of creaky. It would take a long time to load. So The Washington Post became more of a news technology company and less of this sort of old-fogey redoubt, where the technology didnt work too well. And it was just, lets see how many pop-up ads do I have to fight off before I get my content? And so on and so forth. So Bezos really, he brought the newspaper ahead leaps and bounds with those investments. He made it user-friendly. He made it much more user-friendly. Yup. Am I making this up, Erik? Because I feel like I remember around the time youre describing, suddenly seeing a lot more articles that seemed like general interest on social media. I would see things pop up on Instagram and things that seemed very user-friendly, very general interest. I remember having the impression that they seemed to really be broadening their reach in a technologically savvy way. Yes. I mean, under Bezos, The Post invested more in its audience teams and how to reach people. The cliche that now is as you need to reach your audience where it lies or where it sits or where it is, all that sort of lingo. That was reality at The Post. And it was much-needed. And what about Bezoss promise of staying out of the news coverage? Well, I mean, there were many indications that he was indeed staying out of the coverage, as he had promised to. The Washington Post did tremendous coverage of Amazon, had its own reporter on the company. And a lot of people were looking for signs that conflict of interest was coming to roost at The Washington Post, and they didnt come up with much. And not only did they seem independent, but they were really, really knocking it out of the park. During this period, The Post was doing an extraordinary amount of excellent journalism. Before Donald Trumps election, after it, throughout that term, The Post was investigating him as a candidate, as a president, along with other major outlets, in a way that I believe was almost unprecedented in American politics. They were delivering scoops about his philanthropic organizations, about his business operations. And then into his administration, first year, for example, The New York Times and The Washington Post shared a Pulitzer public service prize for coverage of the Trump administrations approach to Russia. And how badly that offended Mr. Trump, you can just look at the lawsuit that he filed against the Pulitzer board a few years back. Right. And so this was an era of tremendous, tremendous journalistic effort and output. They were breaking things that were influencing the news. Yes, absolutely. And during those years, too, famously, The Washington Post came up with a new motto, Democracy dies in darkness. I remember. I think those years represented Bezoss promise fulfilled in an era of tremendous success. So during this period of what sounds like a reinvigorated newsroom, how is it doing on the business side? Was it making money? Was there a strategy? Yes, I mean, part of the strategy, of course, was to ride the Trump Bump, lets be honest about that. But they did a lot of things to improve the product. They were bringing on more subscribers month after month. And through those initial Trump years, The Post was allegedly profitable. But then it fell off a cliff sort of in the beginning of the Biden administration, 21, 22, when digital advertising sort of dried up and the audience dried up. It was not as interesting a time from the viewpoint of a news consumer. There werent major stories coming out of the White House hour after hour on a Saturday morning. So that was less news and less crisis and fewer eyeballs, fewer clicks. That had a big impact on The Posts business. And there was also a slump in digital advertising, to boot. So what you have then is that The Washington Post started losing a lot of money year after year, up to a hundred million dollars. And the eerie feeling you got looking at this is that those systemic problems with the newspaper, relating to digital advertising, subscribers, those problems continued to haunt The Washington Post ledger. Right. What youre saying is essentially that the bump that The Washington Post got in the years after Trump was elected was not a response to a new strategy of a new business model. It was a response to Trump. And so, therefore, the Trump Bump, this enormous influx of readers right after the election in 2016, kind of papered over an intractable problem that was much more intractable than perhaps anybody had anticipated. Yes, indeed. That is essentially what weve learned the hard way, that The Post emerged from these years of profitability. And then this went a little bit sideways, that went a little bit sideways. The audience wasnt fully there, which means that the business model isnt really robust. It cant handle anything less than optimal circumstances. [REFLECTIVE MUSIC] So The Washington Posts business model problems were such that even if you had a management team that was making reasonably smart and logical decisions, the paper would still be struggling. But starting in 2024, Jeff Bezos took a number of steps that turned a problem into a genuine crisis. Well be right back. So Erik, before the break, you mentioned that The Post, in 2024, hit this state of crisis. I think what youre talking about, but tell us what happened. Yeah, so what happened in 2024 was really significant. [WISTFUL MUSIC] The election proceeded with respect to our coverage, just as it always had. The news side was doing its articles. The editorial side was doing its editorials and its op-eds. And things were bumping along just fine. Now, as usually happened, sometime in late summer, early fall, The Washington Post editorial board would begin drafting and publish an endorsement of one of the candidates in the presidential race. And this was something that readers had come to expect. But as we inched closer and closer to the election, there was no editorial coming forth from The Washington Post. Nothing was published. Nothing was published, even though people on the editorial board were working on one and, indeed, had mustered a draft endorsement in favor of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. But 11 days before the election, Will Lewis, the publisher, announced that there would be a new policy. And that policy was to not publish endorsements at all in this race and in future races. It was articulated as a policy shift and not as some sort of political decision. Yeah, explain the reaction to that a little bit. It was epic. People went berserk on The Washington Post. You mean, people were writing in expressing their displeasure. Our digital messaging platforms were aflame. They were very busy. And people answered immediately with their money and they canceled their subscriptions. NPR reported that there were in excess of 250,000 cancellations of subscriptions against a subscriber base that was about 2.5 million at the time. And Erik, why did people have that kind of reaction? Given the fact that an owner of a newspaper traditionally has the right to influence the editorial page. Yes, thats traditionally the prerogative of owners. And its been cemented for decades in American newspapering. But what was particularly problematic here was not necessarily that Bezos had instituted a new policy, per se. The issue was when it happened and what had preceded it. When it happened was 11 days before the election. And what preceded it was that The Washington Post had a draft endorsement for Kamala Harris in the hopper, ready to go. So many people just did the shorthand and say, Jeff Bezos killed the Kamala Harris editorial. Now, The Washington Posts statement was written to prevent that impression from taking hold. But it wasnt very effective in doing that. And a not insignificant portion of subscribers canceled, it seemed, because of this decision to pull the endorsement. There was no uncertainty about the cause and effect here. None. This drop happened because of this decision. And people at The Post were livid about it. And they were also insistent, we should not be held liable for this particular loss. This ones on management. They should take the consequences of this awful decision and not foist it on us via cutbacks, layoffs, buyouts, whatever. I remember this moment as really the first, clearest example of something happening that people had worried would happen when Bezos bought the paper, which is that he would make a decision that at least seemed like it was caving to power, in this case, giving what seemed like a gift to then-candidate Trump. Well, have a lot of company in reaching that conclusion, is all I would say there. And of course, that wasnt the end of it. Just months later, in February of 2025, Bezos, just out of nowhere, declared a pivot in The Washington Posts opinion sections ideological outlook towards personal liberties and free markets. And that came out of the blue. And again, people reached the conclusion that this was a way of pivoting the opinion offerings in favor of Donald Trump and the GOP. And then, I would say, that there was a dismay that deepened over the course of several months. I think that there started to be growing dissatisfaction with leadership. And a number of people took a buyout to leave. Other people just chose to leave. Including you, right? Including me. That was my wife who slapped me and said, wake up, bucko, pretty much, because I was in a state of denial about where everything was headed. I think a lot of us had that same feeling. That we have been at this institution for so long, it had been so steady, it had been so reliable. That we could not believe that the ground was shifting underneath our feet. But there is and was a sentiment there that things were just not very well managed and very well thought through. And that had never been the case before. And that was, I think, the factor that drove a lot of departures and drove a lot of dissatisfaction. It feels worth noting that none of what we are talking about is happening in a vacuum, the layoffs in particular that have happened this week. Jeff Bezos just paid $75 million to a company controlled by Melania Trump, the first lady, for a documentary. Its an exorbitant amount of money. Its caused a lot of people to say that this is nothing short of a transparent attempt to cozy up to the administration. Amazon is also one of the top donors to the East Wing ballroom project the president has pursued. And all of this is happening at a time of unprecedented attacks on the press, including at The Washington Post, where a journalist recently had her home searched by the FBI. And so I think a lot of people are probably listening to this and have heard all of this context and are thinking about all the other things going on right now in the world and in the world of journalism. And theyre wondering, do these cuts, that we are talking about, fit into that backdrop in any way? I am going to say, if you are going to cut a newsroom to please Donald Trump in any way, I think that those cuts would have been different. In other words, they would have gone first after the investigative capacity, the politics desk, the national security desk of The Washington Post. Those desks have done the greatest damage over the years to President Trump. And the desks that you just outlined, to be clear, those are remaining intact? Well, those are remaining more intact than the ones that they targeted. Management has said that the cuts affect pretty much all areas of the newsroom. But the most directly affected, the most proportionately deep cuts fell on the metro, sports and the international staffs. So I dont think that particular read is operative here. The broader critique at play, I think, is just that Bezos is gutting the newsroom that he once propped up and that he once invested in it and that he expanded. So were basically seeing a clawback of the investment that he put into the newsroom. Its basically like a boomerang. So that is kind of a cataclysm at The Washington Post. That is a major, major media story. Why double down on the desks that you mentioned national security, politics, investigations? Why are those desks the ones that he and the rest of the leadership are banking on? Well, the explanation is that they have found, through looking at the data, through looking at the analytics, the areas that readers want. And theyve de-emphasized the ones that readers dont want. We dont have all their analytics. But thats the rationale, that they looked at the analytics. They decided that this was the way to go. And that this was the route to saving the institution. Saving by shrinking the institution, though. Yes. I can understand why that might make sense to double down on what you believe to be your core product. But I want to read you something that Jeff Bezos said when he bought the paper. I dont think you can keep shrinking the business. You can be profitable in shrinking, and thats a survival strategy. But it ultimately leads to irrelevance at best. And at worst, it leads to extinction. So how does that square, if it squares at all, with the idea of doubling down on just those few core areas? Well, I do think that there is some logic there. And that is that The Post has had a tremendous run in these areas. The problem is that they are cutting all kinds of stuff that people have enjoyed in the past. And whenever a newspaper cuts, there is a desertion. And that desertion basically lowers their revenue. It cuts into their revenue because subscribers leave, digital advertisers dont see as much content they want to be adjacent to. And so you get into a spiral, which people in the industry call a death spiral, where you cut the product, people desert the paper, revenues go down, you cut more, people desert, you cut more. And its a self-reinforcing cycle. And its misery. And there is no guarantee whatsoever that The Post is not descending into one of those spirals, because there is an open question as to whether doubling down on these areas is going to float the business model. There is just no guarantee that it will. I want to read you one more thing, Erik. And this is a quote from Marty Barons statement on Wednesday. Marty Baron, former executive editor of The Washington Post. And his statement says, The Washington Posts ambitions will be sharply diminished. Its talented and brave staff will be further depleted. And the public will be denied the ground level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever. Looking at all the cuts that youve outlined, looking at the reaction from people both inside and outside The Post, talking about this in, as I mentioned, apocalyptic terms, what do you think we can say about The Posts ability to do the kind of journalism we have come to expect and rely on from the paper? Well, I would say we should never sell short the abilities of the journalists that are there. [CONTEMPLATIVE MUSIC] When a story emerges, they will get on it. And they will continue investigating. They will continue breaking news. They will continue kicking ass in journalism. So people will continue, I will continue to subscribe to The Washington Post as I have for decades. Nothing will make me ever stop my subscription to The Washington Post. I get it in print. I read it every day. Ive read it through this tumult, too. Every day, I find plenty to read in The Washington Post. It will not stop producing really good journalism. What will happen is we will never see the stuff that they just dont have the manpower to produce. So this becomes something that is utterly ineffable, utterly invisible and utterly impossible to quantify. That there will be things going on in the world that The Washington Post does not have the resources or the eyes to see through. Erik Wemple, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today. We currently have an unprecedented number of counties communicating with us now and allowing ICE to take custody of illegal aliens before they hit the streets. Unprecedented cooperation. On Wednesday, the presidents border czar, Tom Homan, said that the government would immediately withdraw 700 officers from Minneapolis after local officials agreed to increase their cooperation with federal immigration agents. The cooperation, Homan said, involves local officials allowing ICE agents to take custody of undocumented immigrants before they are released from jail. More officers taking custody of criminal aliens directly from the jails means less officers on the street doing criminal operations. And the Supreme Court has cleared the way for California to use a new congressional map explicitly designed to help Democrats in this falls midterm elections. The justices rejected an emergency request by the California Republican Party to block the map. Democrats redrew the states congressional districts last year to counter a similar effort undertaken by Republicans at President Trumps behest in states like Texas. [THEME MUSIC] Todays episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Shannon Lin and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Liz O Baylen. It contains music by Dan Powell, Sophia Lanman, Diane Wong and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Thats it for The Daily. Im Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. and and and When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post more than a decade ago, journalists inside and outside the newsroom were cautiously optimistic. But those hopes were dashed on Wednesday, when the paper carried out widespread layoffs. Erik Wemple, who covered the developments, discusses what went wrong and what comes next. , who reports on the media business for The New York Times. The Washington Post . As part of the layoffs, , one of the last bastions of great sportswriting. | | | | Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Tune in, and tell us what you think at . 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