Washington Post proprietor Jeff Bezos remains committed to the publication, its top editor instructed NCS in an interview Wednesday, hours after the Post laid off a whole bunch of staff.
“He wants the Post to be a bigger, relevant, thriving institution,” government editor Matt Murray stated.
Many Post journalists doubt that, nevertheless, arguing that the establishment can’t reduce its approach to progress. Roughly one in three staff have been laid off on Wednesday, together with greater than 300 within the newsroom, in accordance to folks with information of the matter.
The extreme cutbacks additional intensified scrutiny of Bezos, leaving many Post journalists questioning whether or not he’ll promote the publication, and main some to hope that he’ll.
“If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will,” The Post Guild stated in an announcement.
Bezos has not commented on his present imaginative and prescient for the Post, however he has privately pushed administration to reverse the newspaper’s annual losses, return it to profitability and discover a sustainable path ahead.
In a cellphone interview, Murray was reluctant to talk about his conversations with Bezos intimately and declined to specify when he final spoke with the proprietor. But he known as Wednesday a “reset” day and stated Bezos helps “reinvention.”
“I can say from my perspective, Jeff is nothing but supportive of getting the house in order and being positioned for growth,” Murray stated.
“And he is perfect, from my perspective as head of the news department, about being an owner that does not interfere in the news mandate; doesn’t dictate anything that we do; doesn’t respond to stories; doesn’t drive coverage; and understands the needs and imperatives of what we’re trying to do with our journalism. That’s what I like in an owner.”
Post staff — a few of whom lately wrote letters to Bezos in an ill-fated bid to save their jobs — have been organizing on-line across the hashtag #SaveThePost.
Murray identified that “the first time I ever heard the words ‘save the Post,’ they were uttered by Jeff Bezos.”
That second got here on the finish of 2024, when Bezos spoke on stage at The New York Times’ DealBook convention and stated, “We saved The Washington Post once, and we’re going to save it a second time.”
Murray, who was formally appointed government editor across the similar time, was the primary public face of Wednesday’s layoffs, main some to surprise about writer and CEO Will Lewis, who didn’t talk with staff.
Two years in the past, Bezos personally appointed Lewis to flip the Post’s fortunes round, and staff say there’s been treasured little to present for it.
Murray defended Lewis within the interview: “Will has been working to create alternative sources of revenue” and “working to develop different kinds of AI and product technology. Some of that’s experimental. I can’t say it’s all worked, but also, having an experimental mindset is part of what we needed.”
Murray additionally stated Lewis has put the Post’s digital subscription enterprise “in a far, far better place than it was, and we are having success on that front.”
The Post shed a whole bunch of hundreds of subscribers, although, after Bezos alienated loyal readers by nixing a deliberate editorial web page endorsement of Kamala Harris in late 2024.
Subsequent modifications to the opinion part additional raised considerations that Bezos was utilizing the Post to curry favor with President Donald Trump in ways in which may gain advantage Amazon and Blue Origin, two companies Bezos famously based.
That notion, after all, is nicely out of the Post newsroom’s management. But Murray — in addition to a number of different staffers — stated folks ought to take inventory of what the publication is definitely publishing every day.
“Our job should be reporting on Trump aggressively without fear or favor, and that’s what we’re here to do,” Murray stated. “We’re continuing to do that, and our brilliant staff is producing a lot of great work on that front, as you know, because we’re breaking a lot of scoops.”
When requested whether or not the Post would proceed to report on Amazon even though its Amazon beat reporter, Caroline Donovan, was laid off, Murray stated sure.
“Technology remains important to us,” he stated, despite the fact that staff stated greater than half of the tech beat reporters have been let go.
“We had to make some very hard calls in different areas today,” Murray stated.
Some of the cuts, he indicated, have been about short-term stabilization of the enterprise, not a couple of everlasting discount within the Post’s ambitions.
He sidestepped a query about whether or not he thought-about resigning reasonably than implementing the drastic reductions in pressure.
“I want to have the chance to see if we can get the Post to a better place,” Murray stated. “That’s important because the Post is an important institution that should survive and should thrive.”