‘Washington Post’ journalists plea to Bezos: Don’t gut our newsroom

When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Submit in 2013, the workers hailed him for rescuing it from mounting monetary struggles. For years, the storied newspaper flourished as he invested in its journalism and enterprise improvements.

Extra lately, the paper has misplaced tens of tens of millions of {dollars} yearly. And now Submit reporters — by the scores — are writing letters and social media posts, interesting to Bezos to not get rid of their jobs.

“I am very upset and discover it opposite to what [Bezos] mentioned on the time,” former Submit Government Editor Leonard Downie Jr. tells NPR. “There’s been no announcement about this, no rationale about this. No imaginative and prescient for what the paper should be. I am disturbed and stunned by that.”

Whereas the Submit has not made any public announcement, the letters communicate to the awful perception that layoffs are imminent.

“We’re The Washington Submit‘s worldwide correspondents, writing with a collective plea so that you can protect our newspaper’s world protection, which we worry will likely be drastically weakened in coming cuts,” one such enchantment learn. “Our protection — due to your funding — shapes dialog and world coverage on the highest ranges every day.”

At full drive, the present newsroom stands at simply shy of 800 journalists. Union members say they’ve been warned the newsroom might lose wherever from 100 to 300 folks, although that larger determine might additionally embody workers who work exterior the newsroom.

Warned about assignments, inspired to job hunt

This story is predicated on interviews with 10 present and former Submit staffers drawn from each the newsroom and the enterprise facet of the paper. The Submit declined detailed requests to remark.

The silence concerning the paper’s future from Bezos and Chief Government and Writer Will Lewis has additional broken belief, Submit editors, reporters and business-side staffers mentioned. They spoke on situation of anonymity, for worry of placing their jobs in jeopardy.

The very fact the letters are directed to Bezos displays the journalists’ lack of religion in Lewis, in keeping with six Submit staffers.

They observe that Bezos has not weighed in publicly to assist Submit reporter Hannah Natanson after her computer systems and different units had been seized by FBI brokers over an investigation of a leak of nationwide safety paperwork. Even so, Lewis and Government Editor Matt Murray have strongly supported her and the paper’s attorneys are preventing in courtroom to get the the Justice Division to return her supplies.

Editors are nonetheless asking reporters to interrupt information and meet their deadlines, as they’ve finished all through the paper’s 148-year historical past, which incorporates main roles in masking the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandal, the Clinton impeachment, and the Trump years.

But they’re additionally now providing some uncommon steering.

On the worldwide desk, some editors have informed correspondents to not settle for some assignments that might take them to harmful spots overseas after Sunday, in keeping with three Submit journalists with direct information of occasions. The worry is that the reporters is likely to be laid off whereas in private peril.

Moreover, some editors on the overseas, metro and sports activities desks have quietly advised to the journalists who work for them that they need to critically take into account any exterior job provides they obtain.

Sports activities reporters had been lately informed to cancel plans to go to Italy to cowl the Winter Olympics subsequent week, despite the fact that the paper had put down a big deposit to order work amenities and lodge rooms. Government Editor Matt Murray relented and is sending a scaled-back group of 4 journalists, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday.

Requires Bezos to promote the Submit

The paper went by way of buyouts within the newsroom in fall 2023 as a part of company-wide job reductions. The enterprise facet skilled layoffs a yr in the past.

The Submit Guild, which represents a whole lot of newsroom workers, wrote in a public assertion that it vehemently opposes any extra cuts.

A brand new spherical of cutbacks “solely stands to weaken the newspaper, drive away readers and undercut the Submit‘s mission: to carry energy to account with out worry or favor and supply vital perception into communities throughout the area, nation, and world,” the Guild wrote. “If Jeff Bezos not helps that mission, then the Submit and its readers deserve a steward who does.”

Within the years proper after buying the paper, Bezos — the billionaire founding father of Amazon — had embraced the Submit‘s reportorial zeal. In 2017 the paper adopted the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” motto advised by the paper’s legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward.

He backed then-Government Editor Marty Baron as a accomplice throughout the Submit‘s aggressive protection of President Trump’s first time period, regardless of growing strain from the administration and Trump himself.

In a lawsuit, Amazon alleged the Trump administration discovered a strategy to hit Bezos on the underside line: the Pentagon awarded Microsoft a $10 billion cloud computing contract for which Amazon had been broadly perceived because the main bidder. The choice adopted Trump’s public criticism of Bezos. Courtroom rulings led the Pentagon to settle Amazon’s go well with by splitting up the contract amongst 4 corporations, together with Microsoft and Amazon.

To at the present time, Bezos has by no means interfered in newsroom selections, in keeping with interviews with two dozen senior Submit journalists through the years. However he has been silent on its future and destiny for an prolonged interval.

Bezos has so much to maintain him occupied. In addition to his stake in Amazon, he owns a number of corporations — together with Blue Origin and the AI startup Challenge Prometheus — and he remarried final summer season in a lavish, multi-day affair in Venice. Submit journalists have questioned Bezos’ dedication to the paper, significantly after he concluded Trump was prone to return to workplace nicely earlier than the 2024 elections.

Subscriptions are up, however the paper is shedding tens of tens of millions

In late 2023, Bezos named Lewis, who had edited the Telegraph in Britain and led Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Road Journal as chief government, to steer the paper as CEO.

Lewis appealed not simply due to his profitable push for digital experimentation on the Journal, the British Telegraph and his personal start-up, however as a result of he had been a senior aide to 2 idiosyncratic conservatives: Murdoch and Boris Johnson when Johnson was prime minister. As NPR has beforehand reported, Bezos believed Lewis would be capable to assist the paper navigate Trump’s return to workplace.

Lewis final held a city corridor with staffers in June 2024, when he informed them the paper had misplaced $100 million in 2022 and $77 million in 2023. A number of folks with information of the corporate’s funds say the losses spiked once more final yr. They spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they haven’t been approved to talk about inside company issues.

Lewis has not met with the newsroom since that 2024 city corridor, which coincided with intense scrutiny from NPR, the New York Occasions and the Submit about questionable episodes in his journalistic previous within the U.Okay. and his efforts to dam protection of it.

With a lot fanfare, Lewis has launched a number of initiatives involving synthetic intelligence. He has launched WP Ventures, selling non-traditional journalism, and a free service compiling opinion items from different retailers to attract in new readers. Final yr, the paper bought 675,000 subscriptions, its highest gross sales quantity in 5 years, as first reported by the media e-newsletter Standing.

Thus far, these measures haven’t adequately stemmed the purple ink.

A heat relationship with Trump

In late October 2024, Bezos killed a deliberate editorial endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris within the race for the White Home. He argued that making presidential endorsements eroded belief with the broader public and mentioned he was not doing so to advance his investments.

“Whereas I don’t and won’t push my private curiosity, I may also not enable this paper to remain on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not with out a combat,” Bezos wrote on the time. “The stakes are too excessive… To win this combat, we should train new muscle groups. Some modifications will likely be a return to the previous, and a few will likely be new innovations. Criticism will likely be half and parcel of something new, in fact. That is the best way of the world.”

Bezos later introduced a brand new libertarian emphasis for the editorial web page, which had been a center-left voice opposing a lot of Trump’s assaults on democratic establishments. Bezos as an alternative urged a concentrate on “private liberties and free markets.”

Greater than 375,000 digital subscribers canceled over the dual modifications, as NPR reported. The editorial web page editor resigned and quite a few columnists and reporters departed for different publications. Regardless of these defections, the Submit has not let up on its vigorous protection, together with on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the U.S. seizure of Venezuela’s president, and the Trump administration.

Bezos has, in the meantime, struck up a working and heat relationship with the president.

He and his spouse have dined with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago; Amazon contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration final January and Bezos sat on the dais throughout the ceremony. The Amazon Prime streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first woman Melania Trump. The Wall Road Journal reported she is to obtain the lion’s share of that price.

And below the management of its new editor, Adam O’Neal, Bezos’s editorial web page has failed a number of instances to quote his direct monetary pursuits within the issues it opines about.

Upon buying the Submit, Bezos informed its then-media reporter Paul Farhi that the paper was an vital establishment price preserving for the nation.

“I do not wish to suggest that I’ve a worked-out plan,” Bezos mentioned. “This will likely be uncharted terrain, and it’ll require experimentation.”

“There could be change with or with out new possession,” he mentioned within the August 2013 interview. “However the important thing factor I hope folks will take away from that is that the values of The Submit don’t want altering. The responsibility of the paper is to the readers, not the house owners.”

Amazon is a monetary supporter of NPR and pays to ship a few of its content material.