Last month, Axios reported that “the media industry is getting hit by sizable rounds of layoffs and cost-cutting measures as the ad market continues to show signs of a serious slowdown.”
Though one of the more notable examples of this happening has been Warner Bros. Discovery, where CNN chief Chris Licht has been shuffling some staff to other positions within the company while parting ways with others, the Washington Post has been impacted as well, with an announcement at the end of November noting they’d be ending the Sunday WaPo Magazine and laying off its eleven staffers.
But on Wednesday, nearly a week after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Post had lost 500,000 subscribers since Joe Biden was sworn in, WaPo publisher Fred Ryan announced during an employee “town hall” that even more layoffs would be coming:
The Washington Post will continue to eliminate jobs early next year, Publisher Fred Ryan said Wednesday, weeks after the paper announced it will shutter its Sunday magazine and lay off 11 newsroom employees.Ryan said at a companywide meeting that the cuts will probably amount to a “single-digit percentage” of the company’s 2,500 employees but did not provide specifics. He added, though, that the company will add new jobs to offset the loss of positions that are “no longer serving readers,” and that The Post’s total head count will not be reduced.Later, in an email to staff, Ryan said that the plan to cut jobs “in no way signals that we are scaling back our ambitions” but that “like any business, The Post cannot keep investing resources in initiatives that do not meet our customers’ needs.”
Tensions rose rather quickly in the aftermath, with employees talking over each other and shouting out questions, including one staff member who told Ryan he was obligated to answer them because “we’re a news organization that values transparency.” Another apparently thought it was Ryan’s responsibility to “protect people’s jobs”:
The Guild further aired their grievances in a Twitter thread, expressing that they were “outraged” layoffs would be coming even though they were supposedly told “growth” was happening at the paper:
Not shown in the clips above was the exit music that was allegedly played after Ryan left the room:
Several prominent conservative figures weighed in after the video hit Twitter, and there was little to no sympathy on display for the WaPo employees:
Others made suggestions as to who should be given their walking papers:
While some did express sympathy, it came with some questions:
It was more proof that when you go woke, you go broke, others opined:
As for the Washington Post’s supposed “transparency” issues, suffice it to say that these employees are finding out the hard way what readers have known for years about the WaPo’s “transparency”:
They have none.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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