The Washington Post announced on Tuesday that it plans to cut 240 jobs by offering voluntary buyouts to its employees. In an email sent to the staff on the same day, interim CEO Patty Stonesifer explained that this decision was made due to the Post’s previous overestimation of its subscriptions, web traffic, and advertising prospects in the last two years.
Stonesifer mentioned in an email that the organization urgently needed to invest in its most promising growth initiatives, which led to the difficult decision of restructuring its cost structure. The company has offered voluntary buyouts to specific job roles and departments as a replacement for potential staff cuts.
“To be clear, we designed this program to reduce our workforce by approximately 240 employees in the hopes of averting more difficult actions such as layoffs – a situation we are united in trying to avoid,” Stonesifer wrote.
The New York Times reported that the email did not specify the exact positions and departments that would qualify for buyouts. Further information on the buyout program is expected to be announced during a staff meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 10 a.m. Stonesifer wrote that they created this program to reduce their workforce by around 240 employees to avoid layoffs, which they are all trying to prevent.
The Times says The Washington Post employs 2,500 individuals, with nearly 1,000 of them working in the newsroom. Consequently, the buyouts will impact approximately 10% of the company’s staff. In January, the Post had to terminate 20 employees and discontinue its Sunday magazine due to declining advertising revenue and readership.
According to Axios, the media industry has confronted a historic number of layoffs this year, with at least 17,436 job reductions disclosed by June. News organizations like Vox Media, NPR, and the Los Angeles Times have all announced substantial reductions in their workforces for 2023. Additionally, this year, BuzzFeed, the parent company of HuffPost, ceased its entire news division.
