Trust in corporate media has disintegrated in recent years and even the most powerful legacy institutions are facing a reckoning.
The Washington Post, which is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced Monday that it was laying off a sizable chunk of its staff.
“Today, we are announcing that The Washington Post is offering a Voluntary Separation Program (VSP) to news employees with 10 or more years’ service at The Post, as well as to all members of the video department and to all members of the copy desk and sports copy desk,” Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray wrote in a staff memo obtained by Fox News.
The memo further said that this was part of the Post’s “ongoing newsroom transformation efforts aimed at reshaping and modernizing the newsroom for the current environment.”
It’s been a turbulent decade for the Post.
They were one of the most aggressive defenders of the bureaucracy and the deep state in President Donald Trump’s first term. They leaned even further to the Left in the Biden years and went from denying that the deep state exists to actively celebrating it.
They hired social media columnist Taylor Lorenz in 2022, a COVID-19 lockdown extremist to say the least.
Lorenz eventually parted ways with the Post in October after she called President Joe Biden a war criminal, then seemingly tried to cover it up. By the way, she’s made a full transition from Left to bloodthirsty Left, openly gushing (might I say swooning?) over Luigi Mangione, who allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood.
Lorenz was just a small part of the newspaper’s problems as their readership plummeted and they burned through money. In 2023 they laid off about 10% of their staff. Yet, the former media giant’s financial troubles continued.
According to a January report in Semafor, the Post had “22.5 million daily active users” in January of 2021 when Biden took office. By the middle of 2024 those numbers had dropped to “2.5-3 million daily users.”
It gets worse.
The Wall Street Journal reported in January that the Post lost “around $100 million” last year.
“The Post’s loss in 2024 was roughly 30% greater than the loss a year earlier, according to people close to the company,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Advertising revenue fell to $174 million from $190 million in 2023, missing a target, according to a person familiar with the Post’s finances.”
Bezos is a rich man but it’s clear that even he had his limits with a publication that was bleeding readership and money at an astounding rate. He seemed to conclude that the issue wasn’t merely a bloated staff, but something more fundamental.
The publication didn’t endorse a presidential candidate in 2024. This was met, to no surprise, by much internal wailing and gnashing of the teeth.
The publication continued laying off its staff as Trump was on the eve of retaking his office, despite the Washington Post Guild insistence that the publication was “growing.”
Not long after, Bezos sent out a memo to staff that he shared on X saying that the publication was going to start focusing on two pillars: “personal liberties and free markets.” He also announced there would be a change in leadership for the opinion page.
This appeared to cause another internal meltdown, with some Washington Post journalists lashing out publicly.
Changes at the Post clearly haven’t come quickly enough given Monday’s news about additional layoffs. The publication remains reliably leftwing and produces a steady stream of anti-Trump news and editorials.
They’ve been one of the most constant critics of entrepreneur Elon Musk and the DOGE layoffs of government employees, which is interesting given that their publication is currently getting the internal DOGE treatment.
Much like the Democratic Party, the Washington Post hasn’t found a way to find its footing in the Trump years. Its audience has dwindled, Americans no longer implicitly trust them, and the true reboot has yet to take place as alternative media outlets thrive and take their place.
Maybe, just maybe, legacy media outlets can try not being hyperbolically negative toward the Trump administration, supported by more than half the country, nearly 100% of the time. They could try finding just a little balance in their coverage and get back to basics.
If they don’t, I imagine that the bottom will continue falling out and the layoffs will continue.
