The Washington Post on Wednesday told employees that it was launching a widespread round of layoffs, which will amount to roughly 30% of all employees.

Most affected will be the Sports, Local News, and International sections, according to the NY Times, citing two people with knowledge of the decision. Of the outlet's roughly 800 journalists, more than 300 are getting the axe.

And of course, the left-wing media complex is firmly blaming owner Jeff Bezos - who decided not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 election before vowing to be less biased as an organization. 

The Atlantic, owned by Epstein pal Laurene Jobs, was very dramatic:

The NY Times also framed it as Bezos' fault, writing;

The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.

In a Wednesday call, executive editor Matt Murray told employees that the company had been losing too much money for too long, and had not been meeting readers' needs. As a result, all sections will be affected in some way, and what rises from the ashes would be a publication more focused on national news and politics, business, and health, and less on other things.

"If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming a more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape," Murray said. "And after some years when, candidly, The Post has had struggles."

Murray also said that search traffic has plummeted nearly in half over the last three years, partly due to the rise of generative AI - and that the Post's "daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years."

"Even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience," he said. 

[pause for a second, open this, hit play, continue reading]

In memoriam: 

Average WaPo journalist today after spending a decade trying to help cancel ZeroHedge and advising laid off coal workers to learn to code: