February 4, 2026
Wordle 1, Watergate 0
How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post
Layoffs, sports axed, and a blame war: Bezos vs the Internet, while Wordle steals the show
TLDR: The Washington Post is laying off roughly 300 staff and axing key sections, marking a hard pivot after Bezos-era optimism. Commenters brawled over whether billionaire owners or social media killed the news, while many joked the New York Times survived by selling Wordle—proof the future of journalism is shaky.
Jeff Bezos once promised a “golden era” at the Washington Post. This week, staff woke up to a mass layoff webinar and a newsroom gutted—sports reworked, the books section gone, the flagship podcast scrapped, foreign bureaus slashed. Publisher Will Lewis was MIA; HR and the editor did the talking. It was a bad day—and the comments section turned into a cage match.
The hottest take? That Bezos didn’t kill the Post—social media did. One camp says billionaire owners always clash with journalism, but the real executioner is Facebook, Google, and a click-driven world. Another camp fires back: if you buy a legacy paper for prestige, you don’t flinch at losses and nuke the sports page. Cue the sarcasm—“Right, the internet didn’t play any part,” one user deadpanned, dunking on simplistic blame.
There was meta-drama too. Commenters pounced on a glaring typo—“2013” instead of “2023” losses—until it got fixed mid-thread, with archive receipts dropped like evidence. And the meme of the day? NYT won by selling games. People joked that Wordle is the Times’ real business now—“Watergate who?” energy. The strategy shift to “Politico-lite” got side-eye: focus on politics and national security, but many of the best people are already gone. The vibe: grief, gallows humor, and a slap-fight over who actually broke the news business—Bezos, or the internet.
Key Points
- •Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million and promised financial runway to avoid shrinking into irrelevance.
- •After profitable years around the 2016 election, the Post lost $77 million in 2023 and about $100 million in 2024.
- •Voluntary buyouts in 2023 and 2025 reduced the newsroom from over 1,000 to under 800 staff.
- •A mass layoff, reportedly exceeding 300 newsroom staffers, was announced via a Zoom webinar by executive editor Matt Murray and HR chief Wayne Connell; publisher Will Lewis did not appear.
- •The restructuring shutters the sports department in its current form, reduces metro to about 12 staff, cuts foreign desks to around 12 locations, ends the books section and the “Post Reports” podcast, and refocuses coverage on politics and national security.