Busting out the Post
By 
Having actively alienated as many subscribers as possible by hiring a Murdoch crony to turn the opinion section into a grade-school imitation of the Wall Street Journal‘s, Bezos is taking the obvious next step of completely gutting the news side:
In the spring of 2016, two years after Jeff Bezos acquired The Washington Post, the billionaire joined then-executive editor Marty Baron for an interview. During the sit-down, Bezos declared he was “even more optimistic today” about the newspaper’s future than he was when he bought it. “I’ve always believed…that democracy dies in darkness,” Bezos said, using The Post’s signature slogan, adding that “certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light.”
Nearly a decade later, staffers at The Post are questioning Bezos and publisher Will Lewis’ commitment to the health of the paper—and publicly pleading for them to change course—as they brace for upwards of 100 newsroom layoffs that are expected to hit the sports, metro and foreign teams hardest, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. As of August, the newsroom headcount sat around 800 staffers. Including those anticipated newsroom cuts, as many as 300 Post employees across the broader company could be impacted by the February trim-down, Status has learned.
Spokespersons for The Post did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
“The newsroom is being punished for absolute incompetence from the owner and publisher,” one Post staffer said.
It is a particularly inopportune time for Post leadership to enact broad cuts to the sports desk, which could be shuttered entirely, according to multiple people familiar with the plans, with the start of the Winter Olympics just weeks away. On Friday, managing editor Kimi Yoshino startled sports staffers with a memo informing them that the paper would no longer send a cohort of journalists to Italy to cover the games, according to a copy of the email reviewed by Status. “We realize this decision and its timing will be disappointing to many of you, so please reach out to me if you want to talk further,” Yoshino wrote in the brief note.
Further rankling staff, much of the expense associated with covering the Olympics had already been paid prior to the reversal, according to two people familiar with the matter. The New York Times reported on Saturday that The Post had spent at least $80,000 on housing alone. If anything, that appears to be flushing money down the drain rather than effective cost-cutting. One Post staffer said the cancellation served as a “devastating blow” for the sports team, and is being read internally as a decision by leadership to avoid the poor optics of laying off staffers while they are on a reporting assignment abroad. As Status first reported last week, the layoffs are expected to take place in February. The Olympic Games are scheduled for February 6-22.
As the sports team awaits its fate, the department is in “a state of paralysis,” the staffer said, at least “until it gets some clarity from management.” The person added to Status, “I’m done producing journalism for The Washington Post until I learn if I still have a job. I think a lot of people feel that way.”
This is an ideological, rather than a financial, bust-out. Bezos will keep losing money he doesn’t need, but a news source that is not regime-aligned will just wander around as a neutered zombie if it isn’t shuttered entirely.