Mass layoffs at Washington Post: what is Bezos up to?
Around a third of the journalists at the Washington Post, one of the US's most prestigious newspapers, have been laid off. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos acquired the financially struggling paper from the family that owned it in 2013 and invested heavily in its digital transformation. During Trump's first term in office from 2017 to 2021 it was one of the most critical voices, but since his second term began Bezos has increasingly sought to cultivate a close relationship with the US president.
Impulsive and ill-considered
Bezos would be well advised to sell the Washington Post, Der Standard argues:
“Losses of up to 100 million dollars a year are unsustainable and make radical cuts necessary. Whether the current approach is the right one - eliminating the sports and regional departments and downsizing the still extensive network of correspondents - remains to be seen. Much of what Bezos has done and continues to do seems impulsive and ill-considered. His fear that the Trump administration will crack down on Amazon is undermining the independence and credibility of his newspaper. It would therefore be much wiser for him to sell the Post. But any new owner, no matter how generous, would have no choice but to downsize the editorial team, and even then the Post's survival would still not be assured.”
You can't rely on benefactors
Der Spiegel finds the claim that the redundancies were inevitable due to financial problems completely implausible:
“Wasn't it Bezos who just invested nearly 75 million dollars in producing and marketing a PR film for the US president's wife, a business venture that - based on all the available information - appears to be incurring massive losses? ... The Jeff Bezos case is the prelude to a global scandal. In a world in which journalism is sold off to the highest bidder, who squeezes the last remnants of credibility out of editorial offices, collapse is always just a few quarterly reports away. Benefactors can't be relied on: what good is a 'saviour' who sends his fiancée into space for her bachelorette party but lets his own employees starve on the front lines?”
Betrayal of journalism
Bezos has chosen the path of least resistance, Ukrainska Pravda's editor-in-chief Sevgil Musaieva concludes on Facebook:
“Jeff Bezos is clearly demonstrating his priorities in this situation: rather than investing in complex, expensive and critically necessary international journalism he has chosen the path of political convenience by attempting to build loyal relationships with the current Trump administration. At the same time he's invested millions of dollars in the production and promotion of a grotesque film about the First Lady - 'Melania'. This is such a repulsive, demonstrative replacement of journalistic values with glamour, loyalty and the renunciation of critical questions that it makes you feel sick.”