{"id":1666648,"date":"2026-02-26T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1666648"},"modified":"2026-02-26T17:40:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:40:00","slug":"after-wapo-axed-30-of-staff-we-now-learn-they-lost-100-million-last-year-again-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/after-wapo-axed-30-of-staff-we-now-learn-they-lost-100-million-last-year-again-2\/1666648\/","title":{"rendered":"After WaPo Axed 30% Of Staff, We Now Learn They Lost $100 Million Last Year – Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

After WaPo Axed 30% Of Staff, We Now Learn They Lost $100 Million Last Year – Again<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The The Washington Post lost more than $100 million last year, <\/strong>WSJ<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>, citing people familiar with the matter –\u00a0which explains why Jeff Bezos\u00a0axed<\/a> 30% of the newspaper’s workforce<\/strong>\u00a0three weeks ago, including CEO and publisher Will Lewis<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The 2025 loss matches 2024 – when it also lost<\/a> $100 million, which followed a $77 million loss in 2023<\/strong>, the people said. So, nearly $300 million in losses in three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Post, long associated with its reporting on the Watergate scandal and publication of the Pentagon Papers, has struggled to adapt to a media landscape defined by declining web traffic, shifting reader habits and intense competition for digital advertising. Like many legacy publishers, it has sought to build a sustainable subscription business while navigating the dominance of large technology platforms in distributing news.<\/p>\n

In a staff meeting Wednesday, acting Chief Executive and Publisher Jeff D\u2019Onofrio and Executive Editor Matt Murray outlined what they described as years of overspending and falling productivity<\/strong>. The presentation marked their first major address to employees since the layoffs.<\/p>\n

According to people who attended, D\u2019Onofrio said expenses exceeded revenue between 2022 and 2025, reflecting a hiring surge in earlier years that added hundreds of staff members. He did not detail the full extent of the losses during the meeting.<\/p>\n

The number of news stories published has declined by 42% since 2020<\/strong>, D\u2019Onofrio said, even as newsroom costs in 2025 were 16% higher than in 2020.<\/strong> The figures highlight the strain of maintaining a large reporting staff amid slowing audience growth.<\/p>\n

Murray, who previously served as editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal and took the top editorial role at the Post in June 2024, acknowledged what he called \u201cthe painfulness of the moment.\u201d He signaled a shift in editorial priorities, urging staff to be more selective.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want or need to do every story or jump on everything that happens<\/strong>,\u201d Murray said, according to attendees. \u201cWe\u2019re not a paper of record; there\u2019s no such thing anymore in today\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Murray at an earlier meeting with Washington Post staff. Robert Miller\/Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Still, he emphasized ambition. \u201cWe want to be distinctive, urgent, must-read with every chance we have<\/strong>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Onofrio assumed his current role earlier this month following the departure of publisher and chief executive Will Lewis. He told staff he is developing a broader strategic plan to stabilize the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cBear with me, because that will take some time and obvious care, but I\u2019m keen to get going on it<\/strong>,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we are going to go after it, and we\u2019re going to go after it hard, because we owe it to this place to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago in a staff call,\u00a0Murray told employees<\/strong>\u00a0that the company had been losing too much money for too long, and had not been meeting readers’ needs. As a result,\u00a0all sections will be affected in some way<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n

“If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n

Murray also said that search traffic has plummeted nearly in half over the last three years,\u00a0<\/strong>partly due to the rise of generative AI – and that the Post’s “daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>, of course, painted WaPo’s mass firings as a ‘murder’ – as opposed to a suicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 02\/26\/2026 – 12:40<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/after-wapo-axed-30-staff-we-now-learn-they-lost-100-million-last-year-again<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After WaPo Axed 30% Of Staff, We Now Learn They Lost $100 Million Last Year – Again The The Washington Post lost more than $100…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1666649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1666648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6Zzq","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/02\/wapo20sign_0-APZbAR.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1666649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}