The Washington Post will offer buyouts to reduce headcount by 240 employees

The Post currently employs about 2,500 people across the entire company. A staff meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday to discuss the acquisitions, which will be offered to employees in specific functions and departments.

“The urgent need to invest in our top growth priorities has brought us to the difficult conclusion that we need to adjust our cost structure now,” Stonecipher wrote.

Stonesifer added that takeovers are being offered in the hope of “avoiding more difficult actions such as layoffs – a situation we are united in trying to avoid.”

The acquisitions should put the newspaper “in a strong position for 2024 and beyond,” company spokeswoman Cathy Baird said in a statement, though “this decision remains difficult knowing that some of our valued colleagues may choose to leave at the end of the year.” “

The Post’s sharp cuts come as the newspaper is set to lose $100 million this year, the first time The New York Times reported.

The announcement — which surprised employees — comes about nine months after The Post cut its newsroom staff by 50 positions, including 20 layoffs.

At the time, the company said that by the end of 2023, its total newsroom headcount would be the same size if not larger than it was before the layoffs, thanks to a continued rapid pace of hiring. Then-publisher Fred Ryan said the Post would continue to expand in some high-priority coverage areas but “cannot continue to invest resources in initiatives that do not meet the needs of our customers.”

The announcement on Tuesday is reminiscent of the way The Post handled staff cuts in a bygone era, with the voluntary buyout rounds that became a hallmark of the years before Jeff Bezos bought The Post in 2013.

The Post has largely avoided massive staff cuts since then, although it has shuttered its free daily newspaper and its independent magazine.

Many other media companies have cut staff in the past two years as advertising revenues and readership numbers have declined. CNN laid off hundreds of employees in December, Vox Media laid off 7% of its 1,900-person workforce in January, and the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, has gone through several rounds of layoffs.

This is one of the most dramatic business decisions made by Stonesifer, who became interim CEO earlier this year after Ryan left the company. A director on Amazon’s board and a longtime friend of Bezos, Stonesifer took the job with authorization from The Post’s owner to ensure a smooth transition for the company.

She has insisted that she will not remain in the position permanently and that among her main duties will be to appoint a permanent publisher and CEO. “Just ensuring the team and culture are there for the next decade is really the No. 1 goal,” she said in June.

Stonesifer generally received a warm reception from staff, in contrast to Ryan’s tensions with the newsroom over layoffs near the end of his tenure.