Once considered the savior of the Washington Post when he purchased it, Jeff Bezos gutted the award-winning newspaper and media outlet last week, reportedly laying off about 30 percent of its employees, including people on the business side and more than 300 journalists in the newsroom. The move will decimate the paper’s sports, local news, and international coverage.
While publisher and chief executive Will Lewis is schmoozing at the Super Bowl, Bezos has remained quiet throughout the process, refusing to offer any comment on why someone worth $250 billion couldn’t afford to subsidize a vital news resource. It turns out, he’s stayed silent in other ways.
According to Jon Passantino at Status, a group of wealthy D.C. citizens approached Lewis to ask whether Bezos would consider spinning off its local and sports sections to them. As Passantino puts it, this group wanted to broker a deal to jointly brand and operate these sections, much like CNNMoney (a partnership between CNN, Fortune, and Money).
They never received a response. While Status did not receive a comment from WaPo, they noted that Bezos has “repeatedly ignored interest from would-be buyers while the newspaper disintegrates under his watch.” In 2024, Status reported that tech journalist Kara Swisher led a group of investors in a push to buy the paper from Bezos while it was making deep cuts to its newsroom. At the time, Bezos was vigorously defending his position to kill the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, which signaled to many a desire to curry favor with eventual winner Donald Trump.
As for what Bezos and Lewis have planned for the Post, that remains unclear. They’ve rarely articulated any specific plan for what they want the venerable news resource to be following the cuts. And while executives cry poor and blame journalists for failing to meet market expectations, the New York Times and Bloomberg, both also run by wealthy owners, are thriving and profitable.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer recently recorded its first year-over-year revenue growth in more than two decades after being donated to a public trust.
Clearly, there are solutions for a newspaper as cherished and respected as the Washington Post to thrive and avoid massive layoffs. However, for reasons of their own, Bezos and Lewis are choosing a different, destructive path.
“Bezos’s sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own,” said former Washington Post editor Marty Baron in a statement. “This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
About Sean Keeley
Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Managing Editor for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.