The Washington Post laid off hundreds of employees on Wednesday, which its former executive editor said “ranks among the darkest days” in the newspaper’s history. Approximately one-third of employees were affected.

Staffers at the Post have been on edge for weeks about the rumored cuts, which the publication would not confirm or deny. “It’s an absolute bloodbath,” said one employee, not authorized to speak publicly.

During the meeting, editor in chief Matt Murray told employees that the Post was undergoing a “strategic reset” to better position the publication for the future, according to several employees who were on the call.

Murray acknowledged that the Post has struggled to reach “customers” and talked about the need to compete in a crowded media marketplace. “Today, the Washington Post is taking a number of actions across the company to secure our future,” he said, according to an audio recording of the meeting.

Murray told employees that the Post was ending the current iteration of its popular sports desk, though some employees will remain on a new team. The Post is also restructuring its local coverage, reducing its international reporting operation, cutting its books desk, and suspending its flagship daily news podcast Post Reports.

Murray said that while the Post’s international coverage team will be scaled back, approximately 12 bureaus will remain “with a focus on national security issues”.

“We all recognize the actions we are taking today will be painful – most of all, of course, for those of you who are directly affected, but for everybody,” Murray told staffers on the call. “I know that the reset is going to feel like a shock to the system and raise some questions for everybody.”

Martin Baron, the Post’s executive editor until 2021, said: “This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”

Seeking to lay out the business case of the layoffs, Murray said the move was “about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming a more crowded and competitive and complicated media landscape”.

“I know that these last couple of weeks have been an unusually tense and distracting time for all of us, and I know it will be a difficult day,” he added. “I appreciate the excellence of your work during this time.”

Murray said the Post’s largest team will be focused on covering politics and government, and the paper will also prioritize coverage of nationals news and features topics like science, health, medicine, technology, climate and business.

Post employees who have been laid off will continue to be on staff through 10 April, though they will not be required to work. They will receive six months of continued health insurance coverage.

The affected employees include Caroline O’Donovan, who primarily covers Amazon, the company founded by Post owner Jeff Bezos. Other staffers, including sports journalist Neil Greenberg, have also announced that they were affected.

One editor who was laid off Wednesday laid much of the blame at the feet of Post publisher Will Lewis, who did not speak on the company’s morning conference call.

“Will Lewis’s legacy (already pretty bleak to begin with) will be having enabled Bezos to tank an American institution,” the staffer said, requesting anonymity to speak candidly. “And he wasn’t even brave enough to face his staffers more than once in his tenure at the Post. Embarrassing to say the least.”

After years of growth under owner Bezos, the Post has been shedding staff over the last few years. About 240 staffers left via buyouts offered at the end of 2023, and another chunk of staffers took buyouts last year, which were offered to any employee with more than 10 years of experience.

Layoffs, particularly of journalists in the newsroom, have been less common. In fall 2024, the Post laid off 54 employees from the division responsible for its proprietary publishing software, and in January 2025, the Post laid off about 4% of staffers who worked in advertising, marketing and print operations.

Over the past week, Post employees had been urging Bezos to stop – or at least soften – the planned cuts, signing letters and sending personalized messages on social media that conveyed the importance of the journalism the Post produces.

But Bezos has remained silent, and did not respond to a series of letters sent by staffers representing the newspaper’s foreign, local and White House reporting teams.

On Monday, though, he was there in person to warmly greet Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, on a tour of another one of the companies he owns, his Blue Origin spaceflight startup in Florida.

Baron, the former executive editor, warned: “The Washington Post’s ambitions will be sharply diminished, its talented and brave staff will be further depleted, and the public will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting in our communities and around the world that is needed more than ever.”

Baron called out Bezos for an ill-timed decision to pre-empt the Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris for president in fall 2024, as well as a decision to narrowly focus its opinion page to prioritize writing “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”, decisions that led to the resignation of a top editor and quickly cost the Post hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

“Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own,” Baron said. “This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

The union representing most Post employees said the cuts made Wednesday were not “inevitable”.

“A newsroom cannot be hallowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach and its future,” the union said. “Continuing to eliminate workers only stands to weaken the newspaper, drive away readers and undercut The Post’s mission: to hold power to account without fear or favor and provide critical information for communities across the region, country and world.”

The union suggested that Bezos might not be the right owner for the Post. “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 who that will.”

The union has organized a protest of the cuts to be held in front of the Post’s Washington DC headquarters on Thursday.