Washington Post Eliminates Sports Department in Mass Layoffs

The Washington Post announced layoffs across its newsroom on Wednesday morning that will shutter several sections entirely, including its sports department.

“First, we will be closing the Sports department in its current form,” Matt Murray, executive editor, said on a Zoom call with employees, according to one Post sports columnist.

Some reporters will join the features team to cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon,” Murray said, and a few staffers will stay to work on the print sports section.

Along with sports, the Post is eliminating its book section, suspending its daily Post Reports podcast, restructuring the metro section, and decreasing its international coverage, according to Semafor. The Post is going for a “broad strategic reset” that will mean “significant” job cuts. As many as 100 newsroom staff and 300 people across the company could lose their jobs, Status reported last week.

The sports section had around 45 employees before Wednesday morning.

Following the meeting, the Post sent individual emails to staffers informing them of the layoffs. Sportswriters and editors announced their departures on social media, including NFL writer Mark Maske, sports analyst Neil Greenberg, sports investigative reporters Will Hobson and Molly Hensley-Clancy, reporters Scott Allen, Gene Wang, and Chuck Culpepper, basketball reporter Kareem Copeland, Commanders reporters Tashan Reed and Tom Schad, Nationals beat writers Andrew Golden and Spencer Nusbaum, college sports reporter Jesse Dougherty, Capitals reporter Bailey Johnson, columnist Candace Buckner, NBA writer Ben Golliver, enterprise reporter Sam Fortier, sports media reporter Ben Strauss, data reporter Emily Giambalvo, editors Sarah Larimer, Mark Selig, Greg Schimmel, Michael Errigo, and Scott Silverstein, designer Brianna Schroer, and high school sports reporters Emmett Siegel, Nicky Wolcott, Noah Ferguson, and Matt Cohen. Many of the announcements came from longstanding members of the Post’s staff; Maske, for example, said he had been there nearly 38 years, Wang 37.

The layoffs impacted a third of the company, The Wrap reported.

The Post announced two weeks ago that it would not be sending writers to cover the Winter Olympics, a break from the paper’s longstanding tradition of robustly covering the Games. (The company had already spent $80,000 on Olympic housing, The New York Times reported.) Four writers were eventually allowed to go to Italy, but knew they’d likely get fired while they were there, according to former longtime Post writer Sally Jenkins. Three reporters are also in the Bay Area covering Super Bowl LX.

“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” a spokesperson for the paper said in a statement. “These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

The spokesperson also shared a newsroom memo written by Murray that was shared with staff after the Zoom call. “Platforms like Search that shaped the previous era of digital news, and which once helped The Post thrive, are in serious decline,” Murray wrote. “Our organic search has fallen by nearly half in the last three years.

“Significantly, our daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years. And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”

The cuts had been telegraphed for weeks, as the paper recently told Monumental—which owns the Wizards, Capitals, and Mystics—that it would not be sending reporters on the road to cover games. The sports section was also told not to make spring training travel plans for its Nationals beat writers.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Post for $250 million in 2013, and while the paper saw a bump in web traffic and revenue in the first Trump administration, the publication has struggled with decreasing subscriptions in recent years. The Post has offered buyouts to hundreds of writers and editors and also laid off staff outside of its newsroom, even before Wednesday’s mass cuts, as the paper has failed to stage a turnaround under Will Lewis, Bezos’s choice for CEO who began in Jan. 2024.

The Washington Post Guild said in a statement Wednesday that the paper has lost about 400 people in the past three years. “Continuing to eliminate workers only stands to weaken the newspaper, drive away readers and undercut The Post’s mission,” the Guild said. The organization said it “vehemently opposes” any more layoffs and that thousands of readers have written company leadership against the job cuts.

“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 that will.”

In Milan at the Olympics, reporter Les Carpenter is continuing to work as the guild negotiates a settlement.

“People are still paying for the paper,” he told the CBC. “They’re owed something.”