The Washington Post is cutting roughly 300 people, about a third of its newsroom, in what Jeff Bezos's organization calls a "strategic reset for the AI era." The paper has seen organic search traffic decline sharply as Google's AI overviews and ChatGPT reduce the need for users to click through to news articles.
This is one of the most significant journalism layoffs of the decade. The Washington Post was supposed to be the model for a sustainable digital news operation, backed by the world's richest person. If Bezos cannot make a premium newsroom work at its previous scale, the implications for the rest of the industry are severe.
The remaining newsroom will focus on politics and national security coverage, abandoning or reducing beats in culture, business, and general news. This narrowing reflects a brutal calculus: only coverage that drives subscriptions justifies the cost.