The Washington Post Slashes Commercial Headcount As Challenges Mount

The political news publisher The Washington Post began laying off 4% of its workforce Tuesday, the latest in a series of headaches to plague the storied news outlet over the last year.

The reductions, which will affect fewer than 100 staff in total, will apply primarily affect its business divisions, which include the advertising sales, marketing, and information technology teams, according to The New York Times. The Post is not the only publisher to look for cost savings in recent months—Vox Media and Condé Nast, among others, culled staff in the final weeks of the year.

The looming cuts were first reported by Status. A representative for The Post did not respond to a request for comment.

The layoffs mark another body blow for the reeling publisher, which just four years ago rivaled The New York Times in its overall subscriber count and national prominence. 

But after former President Trump left office in 2020, ending a relentless cycle of unprecedented political news, the two outlets took divergent paths. 

The Times set out to diversify its content portfolio, acquiring The Athletic in 2021 and Wordle in 2022, both of which it used to build a robust library of lifestyle offerings. The Post, meanwhile, failed to similarly account for the shifting news preferences of consumers following the first Trump presidency. The Post also faces more challenges than most text-first publishers, said media analyst David Spiegel.

“They took bets on how to diversify revenue, but it seems that none of those were able to make up for the steep declines in print revenue,” Spiegel continued. “That loss is compounded by aggressive growth projections on the digital business that were kneecapped by the persistent declines in search and social traffic, as well as adtech’s sledgehammer approach to brand safety that makes true journalism next-to-impossible to be profitable from advertising.”

The Post hired a new editor in chief, the former head of the Associated Press, Sally Buzzbee, in 2021, and parted ways with its longtime chief executive and publisher, Fred Ryan, in 2023. In consultation with its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, the paper then recruited media veteran Will Lewis to replace Ryan. 

That decision—made a reality a year ago this month—has proven fraught. Under Lewis’ leadership, The Post has endured a slew of setbacks. After losing roughly $77 million in 2023, it lost around $100 million in 2024, according to Vanity Fair.

Lewis’ plan for launching a “third newsroom” and assigning Buzzbee to lead it backfired, as the de facto demotion led Buzzbee to leave the outlet in June 2024. The Post tried to replace her that month, but Lewis’ top pick for the position, Robert Winnett, reneged on his acceptance after reporting resurfaced his proximity to a phone-hacking scandal in which Lewis himself is entangled. 

The situation worsened dramatically during the presidential election when The Post decided not to endorse either candidate for the first time in decades. Bezos and Lewis both characterized the decision as a return to journalistic impartiality, but the choice irked staff. 

Since then, the storied outlet has suffered an exodus of its top talent. Reporters and editors including Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker, Tyler Pager, and Michael Scherer have fled to competitors, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Politico.

The non-endorsement also led to a wave of subscriber cancellations, with more than 250,000 subscribers canceling their payments. 

“The loss of 250,000 subscribers in the wake of The Post’s non-endorsement has highlighted the fragilities in the subscription model,” said Enders Analysis senior research analyst Abi Watson. “Acting in ways contra to a publisher’s perceived values—Democracy dies in darkness, etc—will turn off subscribers because it’s effectively acting against their own personal values.”

Bezos, Lewis, and The Post executive team have yet to offer little publicly about their vision for turning around the publisher. And now with its advertising, marketing, and technology teams slashed, its commercial capabilities will be similarly reduced.