What on earth is happening at The Washington Post?
Not a week goes by without headlines surrounding the third-largest masthead in the United States, The Washington Post.
The Post, so enshrined in American culture that it is the subject of multiple Oscar-nominated films, has been in turmoil for the past few months, reaching back to the recent US elections.
This week, the paper fired around 4% of its work force, affecting around 100 people from its business divisions, including the majority of its communications teams. It follows billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, also the founder and CEO of Amazon, reportedly overruling a decision from the paper’s editorial board in October to endorse a candidate in the then-upcoming US presidential election. A statement in favour of Democrat Kamala Harris was reportedly already drafted (the Post has endorsed Democrats for president at every election since Jimmy Carter in 1976).
The non-endorsement sparked extraordinary reader backlash, with NPR reporting there were more than 250,000 subscription cancellations immediately following the announcement (representing one in 10 Post subscribers). A number of high-profile staff departed in the wake of the decision: managing editor Matea Gold and White House reporter Tyler Pager to The New York Times, political reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer to The Atlantic, investigative political reporter Josh Dawsey to the Wall Street Journal, and Leigh Ann Caldwell to Puck.
In January, health and science editor Stephen Smith and deputy editor Tracy Jan departed for The New York Times and ProPublica respectively, while Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes publicly resigned after the Post refused to run a cartoon that criticised owner Jeff Bezos (alongside a number of other prominent media executives and businesspeople) as “doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect [Donald] Trump”.
Speculation over future ownership of the Post is rampant, with Pivot host Kara Swisher giving an interview with New York Magazine in which she spoke about her desire to purchase the newspaper.
The newspaper’s union, The Washington Post Guild, put out a statement this week that called it “especially disturbing that Post CEO, Will Lewis, has not directly addressed his employees in a whopping 230 days — during which tumult and turnover have driven many of our highest-profile colleagues to other companies and new policies have been implemented with little explanation”.
Crikey understands that this was likely a reference to a recent return-to-work mandate disseminated immediately following the US election, causing discontent among staff.
The mandate, seen by Crikey, instructs all managers to return to the office five days a week by February 3, all other staff to return by June, and includes remote staff “within commuting distance” of the company’s Washington DC or New York offices.
Morale among many journalists at the Post is understood to be low, as the newspaper has continued to make headlines itself in recent months.
The guild’s statement went on to demand that the company’s leadership “stop punishing hardworking Post employees for the decisions made far above their heads”, which is understood to likely be a reference to the impact of subscriber cancellations following Bezos’ edict to not endorse a candidate at the election.
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