The Washington Post’s cuts come in the wake of rapid expansion and unfulfilled revenue expectations

“This is a really good business, and we’ve exceeded its cost,” Stonecipher said at a company-wide meeting. “So we’re trying to right-size to make sure we’re able to plant the seeds and make the investments in the things we need.”

About 700 of The Post’s roughly 2,500 employees have received notice that they are eligible for the buyouts — but only about a third of those offered will be allowed to take them. Among the areas expected to be hardest hit is Metro staff, where managers aim to trim the staff of 89 by about a quarter, including coverage areas such as education, transportation and social issues, according to people who attended smaller team meetings after Stonesifer’s announcement. .

In an email Wednesday evening, executive editor Sally Buzbee told staff that in addition to Metro’s cuts, changes could include “streamlining” the copy-editing team, reducing the number of newsletters and “more focused strategies” for audio. And video teams.

“We will not ask employees to do more with fewer people,” Buzbee wrote. “But we will ask everyone to help us reimagine how we can achieve the greatest impact with the very significant resources we will carry into the future.”

After the acquisitions, the newsroom will likely have about 940 employees, about the same number it had at the end of 2021, Buzbee wrote to employees.

The buyout terms are more generous than offers made in the 2000s, when The Post last underwent a major staff restructuring. Ultimately, employees who land a job after at least 15 years at The Post will receive two years of salary and payments to cover a year of health insurance.

When Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon, bought The Post for $250 million in 2013, he ushered in a dramatic era of expansion for what had for many decades been seen as a regional newspaper. He pushed the paper’s leadership to position itself as a national and global news provider and, under former publisher and CEO Fred Ryan, The newsroom staff has swelled from about 580 to more than 1,000 today.

Over the past few years, The Post has dramatically expanded its technology and investigative teams and created new departments to focus on climate and health coverage.

But there is There were signs a year ago that The Washington Post, and especially its newsroom, may have grown too big, too quickly — at a time when the entire media world is suffering from economic challenges and declining consumer interests. No sector of the news industry has been immune: NPR laid off about 10 percent of its staff this year; CNN laid off hundreds of employees late last year; Janet has gone through several rounds of layoffs. Spotify cut 200 jobs, most of them in its podcast division, this summer.

After The Post canceled its independent magazine on Sunday, Ryan told employees in December that the company would eliminate a “single-digit percentage” of its 2,500-person workforce through layoffs in early 2023.

Employees publicly clashed with Ryan over the announcement, demanding more transparency about the company’s decision-making process, and the newsroom union grew to its highest percentage of qualified employees in decades. While the newsroom prepared to lay off up to 100 employees, the company laid off just 20 newsroom employees and eliminated or frozen another 30 positions.

At the time, company executives insisted that the total number of employees would remain the same or higher by the end of 2023 as it was before the layoffs. They admitted this week that will not be the case, although executives hope the acquisitions will prompt employees to leave voluntarily.

At a meeting with Metro management on Wednesday, Buzbee pledged that the newspaper “remains committed to local journalism,” according to attendees.

“Of all the bad choices, [buyouts seem] “It has to be the least bad option,” said Katie Mettler, a local reporter who serves as co-president of the Washington Post Newspaper Association, an employee union.

However, she expressed concern that Metro had already borne the brunt of too many cuts throughout the year. “And I’m concerned about the signal we’re sending to readers who we’re asking to pay us and trust us,” she said.

At the employee-level meeting, Stonesifer said that although the company had expected continued growth across the board, it had instead seen significant declines across its business. Digital subscribers, currently at 2.5 million, are down more than 15 percent since 2021, and the total digital audience is down 28 percent over the same period.

The newspaper is set to lose $100 million this year for the first time The New York Times reported.

While readership rose during the Trump years, Stoneifer pointed to a decline in interest in politics after 2020 as one reason for The Post’s audience decline.

“We knew we were going to lose some people with Trump, but … we thought we would be able to keep them, and that the quality of the work we were doing in other areas would keep them. It didn’t hold up.”

While Stonesaver said The Post “was very active in investments” under the previous executives, she disagreed with one employee who claimed the company had “concentrated” under Bezos’ ownership. Stonesaver, an Amazon board member and longtime friend of Bezos, took over from Ryan in June, and is tasked with finding a permanent replacement for him.

“Bezos trusts his leaders to his leaders, and he may trust them longer than you do,” Stonecipher told employees.

Stonesifer said Bezos agreed to the acquisitions “as soon as we knew the plan was wrong,” and insisted that Bezos is open to spending more money on The Post once a new publisher is in place, perhaps by the end of the year, and can plan a broader strategy. For the sake of the company.

“He’s good at investing,” Stonecipher said, referring to another Bezos side project, his aviation and space company, Blue Origin. “I mean the guy fires rockets.”