Washington Post begins hundreds of newsroom layoffs as Jeff Bezos ignores reporters pleas: report

The Washington Post announced mass layoffs across the newsroom Wednesday – ignoring impassioned pleas from reporters to billionaire owner Jeff Bezos over the past few weeks, according to a report.Hundreds of journalists across the newsroom could be impacted, especially the paper’s local, international and sports desks, according to the New York Times.Status newsletter earlier reported as many as 300 employees company-wide could be laid off.Newsroom staffers were told to “stay home today” and attend a Zoom call at 8:30 a.m.

ET about “significant actions across the company,” according to a Wednesday email from Executive Editor Matt Murray and Chief Human Resources Office Wayne Connell obtained by CNN.“The actions we are taking include a broad strategic reset with a significant staff reduction,” Murray said on the call, according to the New York Times.The Washington Post did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.Mass layoffs have been expected for weeks after the broadsheet sent out a shocking internal memo announcing it was scrapping its Winter Olympics coverage, sparking fears it could eliminate its sports desk entirely.It ultimately reversed this decision and announced plans to send a small team of reporters to Italy – but staffers continued to panic over reports the paper’s publisher, Will Lewis, has spoken privately about investing in politics and cutting back on sports and foreign affairs.“If the plan, to the extent there is one, is to reorient around politics we wanted to emphasize how much we rely on collaboration with foreign, sports, local – the entire paper, really.And if other sections are diminished, we all are,” White House bureau chief Matt Viser and seven other White House reporters wrote in a letter to Bezos obtained by CNN. In the letter to Bezos — which began with a chummy “Dear Jeff” — the journos attempted to appeal to the billionaire Amazon founder with numbers, claiming that many of their...