Fired Washington Post Writers Mocked Into Oblivion Online
“We are seeking applicants experienced in writing fictional content presented in the tone and style of a legitimate news organization.”
To put it mildly, sympathy was in short supply on social media for the more than 300 journalists laid off by The Washington Post on Wednesday. For many critics, the cuts felt less like a tragedy than a reckoning that has been decades in the making, driven by slanted coverage and editorial missteps at what was once a great newspaper. The Post reportedly lost $100 million in 2024, following a $77 million loss the year before. The layoffs affected roughly a third of its newsroom, and underscored just how far the institution has fallen.
Having spent years pushing the Russian collusion hoax — coverage rewarded with a Pulitzer — and dutifully promoting every anti-Trump narrative since, the capital’s flagship publication abandoned reporting in favor of trying to shape the news.
Within hours of President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, this venerable newspaper published a story titled, The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun. The following month, it adopted a new slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
So, it’s understandable that since news of the layoffs broke, social media users have shown no mercy, mocking the fired writers into oblivion.
Following the layoffs, many former employees took to Twitter to lament the loss of their jobs.
Akilah Johnson wrote that she’d been hired by The Post in 2021 “to cover health disparities & explore the way racism & social inequality affects health. 4 months ago, I became the generations’ reporter exploring how health is experienced by different pple across the life course. Today, I was laid off.”
In 2021, I was hired by @washingtonpost to cover health disparities & explore the way racism & social inequality affects health. 4 months ago, I became the generations’ reporter exploring how health is experienced by different pple across the life course. Today, I was laid off.
— Akilah Johnson (@akjohnson1922) February 4, 2026
A sympathetic figure? Her post goes a long way toward explaining how the legacy media giant managed to lose $100 million in a single year. Not only were users unmoved by her words, but her post was also widely mistaken for parody.
Her bio reads like parody. It says she joined The Post in 2021 “as a national reporter exploring the effect of racism and social inequality on health. In prior roles at ProPublica and the Boston Globe, she covered the intersection of health, race, politics, and immigration.”
If you were looking for a reason why you were laid off, you just said it.
— Guy Incognito (@Incog1986) February 4, 2026
Seth Dillon, CEO of satire website The Babylon Bee, appealed to those who had just been let go, encouraging them to send an application: “We are seeking applicants experienced in writing fictional content presented in the tone and style of a legitimate news organization.”
If your position at The Washington Post was recently eliminated, please consider applying to write for The Babylon Bee. We are seeking applicants experienced in writing fictional content presented in the tone and style of a legitimate news organization.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) February 5, 2026
On Facebook, conservative influencer Matt Walsh openly ridiculed the laid-off workers. He wrote:
I was hired by the Washington Post in 2019 to cover the way racism in the healthcare industry impacts gay aborigine midgets with cardiovascular disease. Today I was laid off. I worked incredibly hard over the past 7 years to produce no less than 4 articles on this important subject. I was only paid $650,000 a year for my tireless efforts. Now I’m out of a job. I can’t believe this has happened to me.
One reader humorously responded, “Like they say in Minnesota, You live. You lear.”
Another replied, “Sounds like the next big opportunity is owning a Hospice in L.A.”
Here are some additional responses:
Mr. Walsh, you never met me but it was my job at the Washington Post to find synonyms for “Pounce” every time a journalist wrote “Conservatives Pounce.”
My job was vital to democracy, which I truly believe is dying in darkness.
— Corpo Scribe (@NightCityTimes) February 5, 2026
I was part of the Washington Post layoffs today.
My job was to identify any location or activity with predominantly White people and explain why we should all be ashamed of ourselves for allowing it to exist.
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) February 5, 2026
I was just laid off from the Washington Post. It was my job to make sure it was always make sure every criminals’ race was mentioned, unless they weren’t white. Then it was my job to make sure race wasn’t mentioned.
— Dr Strangetweet or How I Learned to Love the RT (@lone_rides) February 4, 2026
None of this is cause for celebration, but it does help explain the reaction. When an institution spends decades lying to the public, shaping false narratives, and mistaking ideology for journalism, it shouldn’t be surprised when goodwill evaporates.
What played out online was less cruelty than a blunt verdict: credibility, once lost, is expensive to buy back — and no newsroom, no matter how elite or storied, is immune from the consequences.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
new tear-jerker
writing while black
see how the intrepid fighter for true social justice who was hired for her skin color is now let go for the same,,only that part cant be said
dont worry Im sure the root will hire you or bet etc etc
Learn to code. Or, lear to code. I forget which.
I had a code, but I took some NyQuil and it fixed me right up.
Learn to Coal… 🙂
If a WaPo reporter/editor gets laid off, does it make a sound?
yeah
cha-ching!
If a WaPo reporter/editor gets laid off, does the light go on?
Laugh track.
“Not cause for celebration” ? Come on. The day the WaPo is no more, will be a great day. No more lies, bias, hate, Leftist exclusionary ideology, anti-American sentiments, overpaid puffed up “journalists,” bad writing, etc. etc.
You would have to shut down a lot of so-called “news”papers to accomplish your “no more” list.
My wife and I grew up in houses that subscribed to daily newspapers, and subscribed ourselves for 30 years or so. Then there came a point where the slant and the hate for people like us was so obvious and offensive that she reduced our subscription to the weekend-only offering, just to be able to access the sale flyers. Then enough stores established independent websites and email subscription capabilities to allow her to flush the paper altogether. Asi achih.
As one wag said somewhere – learn to substack.
“ None of this is cause for celebration”
I beg to differ.
There is nothing better than watching a bunch of narcissistic losers get it good and hard. Almost everyone of these people won’t be able to find a job in the field of journalism and that’s a good thing.
They should have gotten the hint last year when it was announced the coverage there was going to become more balanced and instead of acting like adults the children dug in their heels and screamed at the moon. They FA’d last year, this year they FO’d.
Not to mention the majority of the signatories on that open letter to Jeff Bezos were the ones cut.
Newsflash: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
So you are saying that many of these fired people could file a First Amendment lawsuit against Bezos.
You KNOW they will. I hope it’s expensive for them.
“Congress shall make no law…” Congress = government. Bezos is not government. Any such lawsuit should rightly be laughed out of court.
Yep. It’s a positive thing to celebrate the defeat of the villain(s) b/c to do so means you still have the ability to understand/recognize who the ‘baddies’ are and moral courage to do so publicly.
These folks being laid off at WAPO had the opportunity to become indispensable to the existence of their employer. Cleary they fell short and most of them probably lack the honesty, self reflection and emotional maturity to admit this fact even a decade from now.
What is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their editors.
That is Good.
Now do the NYT, BBC…
The BBC is government funded. Well taxpayer funded. It will never get rid of anyone especially as long as government is labor led.
The BBC may not go “out of business” but it does appear that there is a strong possibility of a blow to their budget coming in the next year or so.
Why is Donald Trump suing the BBC?
13 January 2026
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mx28vlp4wo
If you’re called to an unscheduled staff meeting, and Amelia walks in, you’re cooked.
Bezos didn’t get where he is by burning money in a bonfire. To all the self important “journalists” that expected and demanded he continue to fund their vanity project I have one thing to say “learn to code”
Oh it goes far beyond demanding he fund their vanity project.
When he refused to endorse Kamala, they tried (and succeeded) in getting huge numbers of liberals to cancel their subscriptions.
That’s DIRECTLY lead to this.
Soundless like a sequel is coming to the movie… Sleepless in Seattle…. Jobless in DC….
Or how the Washington COMpost found its way to the garbage heap….
Communists suffering is always cause for celebration.
Dana Milbank and George Will weren’t fired, apparently, so they are still unserious about returning to profitability.
If every liberal whining about the Washington Post firings were actually subscribed to the Washington Post, they wouldn’t be losing hundreds of millions of dollars and laying off all these ‘journalists’.
NY Times writers on X defending the laid -off saying this will harm journalistic standards. Also the NY Times just said that JD Vance should have been traded for drugs as a baby.
The mocking was epic.
It was as pathetic as beating the crap out of a teenaged armed robber, taking his gun and beating him senseless… then having said robber come and ask for his gun because he took it from his dad w/out permission and now his dad is going to whoop his butt into the next zip code.
But IT IS cause for celebration.
– More than 2,600 hospital employees were laid off by a Pennsylvania hospital. A SINGLE hospital
– Rite Aid Pharmacy laid off 1,000 employees
– 16,000 Amazon employees
– 30,000 UPS employees
300 journaliars is a drop in the bucket compared to others who lost their jobs. But all of a sudden, Washington Compost layoffs create “Darkness.”
Get over yourselves.
‘Get over yourselves’ is exactly the right tone. These privileged people have been coddled for decades.They were selected for Univ admission and hired based not on true merit but their willingness to toe an ideological line and remain committed to pumping out pieces to create and maintain the preferred narrative. They were sheltered from actual real world competition and consequences. Now facing such things, much like a pretty young woman used to commanding a room with her beauty, they are shocked to have been told ‘No, thanks’ for the first time. They’ve grown arrogant and complacent wallowing in an unearned privilege that, until now, was invisible to them. They didn’t realize they had privilege until suddenly they feel the results of its absence. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’….or a privileged leftist told no.
It is exactly the right tone. Excellent post.
“When you’ve spent your entire life entitled, equality will feel like discrimination.”
Thomas Sowell
I always had a suspicion that the Democracy dies in darkness slogan had to do with not being able to afford the light bill.
I always regarded it not as a motto, but as a mission plan.
I am a recent graduate of Harvard with my major being in Left-Handed Bipolar Handicapped Transgendered Undocumented Migrant Lesbians of Color studies. I was hired by the Washington Post in early February 2026 to cover the difficulties in obtaining a license to sell hair tonic to bald eagles in Omaha, Nebraska. Today I was laid off. I worked incredibly hard for a few minutes to think about no less than one outline of a rough draft of an article on this important subject. I was only paid $0.99 for my tireless efforts and had to start selling my body on the streets with no takers to make ends meet. Now I’m out of a job. I can’t believe this has happened to me.
A slogan which may help with your hair tonic sales: “Toupees are for the birds.” Use it, don’t use it. Free rights granted.
“None of this is cause for celebration”
I’m celebrating, does that make me a bad person?
It’s their own fault several generations of Democrat/Progressive ideology running public school, many people are barely capable of reading
“For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.”
— Hamlet, act 3, scene 4
Whole Foods is hiring