Washington Post Slashing Workforce By Hundreds Following ‘Overly Optimistic’ Projections

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

The Washington Post will be reducing its workforce by 240 employees as it struggles with stagnant growth, according to an internal email sent to staff on Tuesday.

The email, which was sent to the entire staff of the paper owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was first reported by the New York Times’s Ben Mullin. Here is some of the text:

Dear colleagues, I am so sorry to have to share some difficult news,

Over the last 8 weeks, I have been working with the senior leadership team to review the current state of our business and financial results. We have determined that our prior projections for traffic, subscriptions, and advertising growth for the past two years — and into 2024 — have been overly optimistic and we are working to find ways to return our business to a healthier place in the coming year. …

[W]e have decided to offer a voluntary separation package over the next few weeks to reduce our workforce by approximately 240 people across all functions of The Post. This program will offer generous incentives to employees in specific roles where we believe we can reduce costs…

To be clear, we designed this program to reduce our workforce by approximately 240 employees in the hopes of averting more difficult actions such as layoffs — a situation we are united in trying to avoid.

The email concluded with the announcement of a company meeting to take place on Wednesday and the news that employees eligible for the separation program will be notified via email.