By SUZANNE DOWNING
Last week, The Washington Post announced what some in legacy media are labeling a “crisis”: Approximately 30% of the staff was cut as part of a broad strategic reset aimed at making the paper both readable and profitable again. If you listened to the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the newsroom, you would think the sky was falling.
We are not crying and rending our garments for them.
Journalists, historically among the most vocally self-important professionals in America, took to social media in an instant and reactionary fit of outrage bordering on performance art. They hurled invectives at The Post’s leadership. They trashed the owner, Jeff Bezos. They railed against “losses” and “management decisions.” They acted as if owning a newsroom automatically confers an eternal pension, a lifetime appointment, and a divine right to income without accountability.
They just haven’t figured out that no job is guaranteed for life. Not in trucking or transportation. Not in manufacturing or machining. Not in call centers, coal mines, or on casting couches. And not in the joke that has become journalism.
We’re reminded of this classic Washington Post headline. You remember – the one where birdwatching is a racist activity:
The reality is The Washington Post has been bleeding money for years under Bezos’s ownership, losses running in the tens of millions, if not more. Reports from The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and statements by Post leadership themselves point to roughly $77–100 million in losses in 2023, around $100 million in 2024, and more than $177 million in red ink over the past two years. Of course, full financials aren’t publicly available because this is a privately held company, but this has all come out of leaks from inside the Post itself.
In perspective: Bezos’s net worth sits north of $240 billion. In the context of his personal wealth, The Post’s losses are small. Yet the newsroom, many of whom openly bashed Bezos long before the layoffs because of his perceived political views and support for free markets, acts like he should be personally underwriting lifetime employment for a privileged caste of media workers.
News flash: Businesses have to make money. If they don’t, they shrink or they die. That’s how capitalism works. That’s how jobs get created and preserved.
And yet here we are, listening to journalists, professionals armed with bylines and social clout enough to think of themselves as the fourth branch of government, acting as if their roles are sacred, immutable, and immune to market forces that every other industry lives with daily.
Remember when The Washington Post staff staged a strike in 2023? It was a 24-hour walkout organized by the Post Guild, the union representing the workers, involving more than 700 employees demanding better pay, better contracts, and. yes, protections against layoffs. Union leaders cited morale issues and stalled negotiations after 18 months. It was celebrated in left-leaning media as a victory for labor.
Well, guess what? They got what they wanted: higher pay, union contracts, more protection. And the cost of those concessions, combined with declining subscriptions, ad revenue challenges, and broader industry headwinds, helped push the paper deeper into the red.
Now they want Bezos to bail them out with cash from Amazon? To magically conjure infinite revenue? To subsidize a newsroom that has spent years bashing him anyway?
In the words of Joe Biden, “Come on, man”.
The arrogance on display is stunning. We’ve all seen workers in other sectors, such as oil and gas, retail, technology, hospitality, retrain, retool, find new careers, shift industries. But a guild of journalists publicly mourning layoffs as if they were victims of cosmic injustice? That’s a worldview that only survives in a media echo chamber that has insulated itself from real economic pain for decades.
No one is saying losing a job is fun or that individuals shouldn’t feel upset when their livelihood disappears overnight. But the collective narrative that The Washington Post is a martyr in some noble struggle against corporate greed is laughably out of touch.
Every job is temporary. Every employer has constraints. Every business must adapt or perish.
So to the journalists whining about Bezos and management: Get over it. Get on with your lives. And maybe, just maybe, remember that millions of Americans have to reinvent themselves mid-career without thousands of social media followers amplifying their grievances.
The layoffs at The Washington Post are a reality check for legacy media and for a generation of journalists who need less entitlement and more resilience.
Suzanne Downing is founder and editor of The Alaska Story and is a longtime Alaskan.
9 thoughts on “No one is owed a newsroom job at Washington Post”
I wonder what is the average age of these poor souls?
I don’t think raising a generation or two in day care centers and public schools while mom and dad both work to afford all the extraneous things modern Americans think they can’t live without has produced more resilient, hard-working Americans.
When all the superfluous things replace regular time spent with your family and money is spent satisfying desires instead of love given and discipline taught (by word and example), entitlement ensues.
Two generations of Americans have been cut adrift -untethered from reality- by the social trends of small families and double incomes. We’re reaping what we sow if we maintain the status quo: a society permeated by Socialists uninterested in building families because they don’t know what they are, and incapable of thinking critically or responding rationally to external forces that bring about change in their lives.
For literally decades now, the Washington ComPost has been nothing more than “all the fake news that is unfit to print”. It has reliably been the mouthpiece for the corrupt political and financial establishment. It does not have, and has not had, ANY legitimacy as an authentic news organ.
My … empathy, sympathy, and compassion is simply tapped out. I simply don’t care about those who’ve been lying and manipulating us for decades, especially for those with no remorse and/or apology. For many of us in the private sector, we’ve had to learn to recognize – adapt – pivot – retool – overcome, in order to prevail and succeed. It’s been a great ride and you too can do it, or not(!) … your choice.
I assume you are referring to the Trump administration
You just lived up to the old saying about” assume “
They have the same lack of perspective as regards access to government information. For dome,reason, the belief is strong that the First Amendment allows them to go anywhere, do anything, for the sake of their getting ” The Story”, that will win them an ego award. Sorry, but being a journalist doesn’t exempt you from laws restricting access to military information or private property it also doesn’t permit you to disrupt the religious services of even disfavored groups
I sure do appreciate your reporting all of the news that needs to be reported. Thank you Suzanne! The Alaska Story is my #1 news source!! Keep up the good work!! There are so many news sources that are so liberal that are losing readers and subscriptions and donations that are going by the wayside. ADN was asking for donations during the holiday season. I think that’s a red flag for that liberal rag. Keep up the great work but be sure to get your rest!!!
Dennis, Downing always has a donation button. That doesn’t make her liberal.
I am sure that some on the Left would dispute the principal claim regarded a job. Many government employees and most of the Deep State would assert that there is an absolute Constitutional right to their positions. And they will litigate to and through the Supreme Court and the International Court at the Hague on that point.