Top Washington Post editor Paul Murray addressed the mass layoffs at The Washington Post at a town hall meeting with staff on Wednesday. He acknowledged a “widespread sense of loss, genuine trauma,” after the company laid off nearly a third of its employees a week ago. However, he also expressed his confidence that The Post was now on a path to success.
“There’s no doubt that just the sheer depth of the cuts – and also, with that, the reality of what we face at The Post – has been a very hard thing to wrap our heads around and to grapple with,” Murray said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by the Guardian.
Murray said it was a “shocking discovery” for management to understand the scope of the financial problems the company is facing. But he said he did not want to “look backwards and litigate the past.”
“The company has been a mess in lots of ways for a long time, but I’m confident stars are aligning in a positive way,” he added.
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Murray also said The Post leadership used data on readership trends to determine which areas to cut. The publication’s sports, international, local and style sections were particularly hard-hit. “I’m sure we got some things wrong, but if I look around the room with everybody here, I know we got a lot of things right,” he said.
The Washington Post had said last week that it is getting rid of its sports section as part of mass layoffs of one-third of its staff across all departments. Some sports reporters will move to other departments as the newspaper goes on with large-scale cutbacks. The Post currently has reporters on site covering Super Bowl LX in California and the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina. “If we are to thrive, not just endure, we must reinvent our journalism and our business model with renewed ambition,” Murray had said.
While The Post achieved historic success during the first Trump administration, Murray said there was “no more Trump bump” these days. “People are reading [about] Donald Trump, but they also want to escape from Donald Trump,” he said. He stated that “the mission of The Post is unchanged,” when asked whether the publication’s mandate and ambition had shrunk.
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Jeff D’Onofrio, who was named acting publisher by the owner, Jeff Bezos, after Will Lewis abruptly resigned on Saturday night, also spoke about the layoffs. “For the past five years, the Post has not directly addressed deeply rooted problems, turning an eye at our revenue downturn and staying our course despite shifting traffic and user habits,” D’Onofrio said. “This was a decision to change the scope and direction of our business.”
Murray also faced tough questions from longtime employees, who were skeptical about the Post’s new direction. “I’ve not seen this place as demoralized as it is right now,” said one veteran reporter, who asked why employees should continue to believe in management. “I can’t tell you to believe in me or believe in Jeff or believe in other Jeff,” Murray responded, acknowledging it was an “essential question.”
“We’re here, we’re talking, and I have an incredible amount of faith in the masthead team,” Murray added.