The Washington Post is preparing to reduce its staff by 240 employees after the outlet did not meet revenue or subscription expectations in the past several months.
Interim Washington Post CEO Patty Stonesifer announced the staffing cut “across all functions” of the paper in a memo sent out to employees Tuesday, according to multiple reports. The newest cut in staff follows suit to the financial burdens and layoffs other corporate outlets have witnessed in the past year, such as NPR and CNN. The Post currently employs roughly 2,500 staff members.
Senior leadership will be offering a voluntary separation package over the next few weeks, according to The New York Times’ Ben Mullin. Stonesifer said the program will “offer generous incentives” to staff in specific departments and roles, and will be awarded based on seniority if the number of volunteers exceeds the 240 figure, Mullin reported.
“Over the last 8 weeks, I have been working with the senior leadership team to review the current state of our business and financial results,” the memo reads, according to Mullin. “We have determined that our prior projections for traffic, subscriptions, and advertising growth for the past two years — and into 2024 — have been overly optimistic and we are working to find ways to return our business to a healthier place in the coming year.”
Inbox: Washington Post is reducing its workforce by approximately 240 positions pic.twitter.com/GFVdGZw2pa
— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) October 10, 2023
“We have work going on across the organization to develop a strong plan for 2024 — and make no mistake — we remain bullish about the future of The Washington Post,” the memo continues. “Our core products and many of our recent investments show great promise — and we all believe the growth we saw in 2016 to 2021 will be ours again if we prioritize and plan appropriately. But the urgent need to invest in our top growth priorities brought us to the difficult conclusion that we need to adjust our cost structure now.” (RELATED: The Big Liberal Media Bloodbath Of 2022 Spills Into December)
Media outlets across the U.S. have purged their staff over budgets and profitability. In December 2022, the Post eliminated its decades-old stand-alone weekly Sunday magazine, primarily due to “economic head winds.”
CNN laid off and terminated a massive portion of its staff after its profit sank below $1 billion for the first time since 2016 with the rise of digital subscriptions and record-low ratings. Prominent figures at the network, including Chris Cillizza and Alison Kiosk, were fired in early December.
NPR announced the outlet planned to lay off 10% of its staff in February after revenues were estimated to fall roughly $30 million short of an annual budget of $300 million.
Big Tech workers have also slashed staff around the same time. At Twitter, Elon Musk eliminated the entire Board of Directors to appoint himself as the sole director of the company and slashed 70% of the company’s staff, while Facebook parent company Meta cut over 11,000 jobs, 13% of its staff, due to inflation and difficulty in the advertising market.