During the February 4 live broadcast of CNN’s The Situation Room, hosts Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown shared an update regarding one of the businesses owned by Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post(Image: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
CNN interrupted their live show on Wednesday to report on The Washington Post layoffs.
The outlet broke the news on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown on February 4, with CNN correspondent Brian Stelter reporting that the publication, owned by Jeff Bezos, announced layoffs affecting one in three staffers.
Stelter said that the Amazon CEO was pressing his management to make the post profitable, and how he turned the opinion section “Trump-friendly,” which led to the loss of many subscribers. Brian added that The Washington Post is cutting back by shrinking the metro section, laying off International correspondents, and shutting down the sports section.
Stelter also noted how Bezos was blasted by former Washington Post employees over the layoffs. After Stelter finished his reporting, Blitzer shared his opinion on the matter and said, “So sad indeed. As someone who for many, many years has been reading the Washington Post every day, it’s a heart breaking development indeed.”
The newspaper’s Executive Editor Matt Murray made the announcement about the move on Wednesday morning. In the morning call, he called the layoffs, “a strategic reset” and an action to “secure” the Washington Post’s future, per The Independent.
A Post spokesperson said in a statement, “The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company. These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”
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Wolf Blitzer called the news of The Washington Post layoffs “heartbreaking”(Image: CNN)
Murray had stated that the Post will close it’s sports desk while keeping some sports reporters to write feature stories and cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon,” per SEMAFOR. They are also shutting down their Books section and halting their signature podcast Post Reports.
The executive editor said the Metro section will be restructured to maintain a “more focused team with new beats, and with a particular emphasis on ensuring a healthy presence for local subscribers in the print paper.”
In a statement by The Washington Post Communications on X formerly Twitter, Murray said in part the news was “painful” and the layoffs are “difficult actions.” He added that the outlet has “grappled with financial challenges” and that in order to thrive The Post must “reinvent” their journalism and their business model.
Former Post employees have responded to the news, as former Executive Editor Marty Baron made a blistering statement in which he blamed Bezos for the development.
Brian Stelter reported that one in three The Past staffers were impacted(Image: CNN)
He firstly called the layoffs, “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.” Baron also said how the ambition at the paper will be more “diminished,” the talent of its staff “further depleted” and the public “will be denied the ground-level, fact-based reporting” locally and globally.
“The Post’s challenges, however, were made infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top —from a gutless order to kill a presidential endorsement 11 days before the 2024 election to a remake of the editorial page that now stands out only for its moral infirmity. Loyal readers, livid as they saw owner Jeff Bezos betraying the values he was supposed to uphold, fled The Post. In truth, they were driven away, by the hundreds of thousands,” he added in part.
Baron took more aim at Bezos and said that the billionaire’s “sickening efforts to curry favor with President Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
Former fact check Glenn Kessler also took a dig at Bezos in a column he wrote, which was published on Substack on February 3. He said that “Bezos is not trying to save The Washington Post. He’s trying to survive Donald Trump.” Kessler noted how Bezos bought The Post in 2013 and is presently worth about $250 billion.
“Bezos is a businessman, and the Washington Post is not a charity, so I understand the inclination to demand that losses be stemmed. The newsroom should be able to stand on its own feet,” Kessler wrote in part. “But even if the losses are still around $100 million a year — the figure announced a couple of years ago — for a person of Bezos’ wealth, that would mean he’d have to close the place in… 2,500 years.”
The Washington Post was founded in 1877(Image: AP)
He further said that he didn’t believe the layoffs had a great deal to do with saving money as Amazon just “spent $75 million buying and promoting a documentary about Melania Trump. It’s about power and influence in Donald Trump’s second term.”
During Trump’s second term, Bezos has been spotted with the Republican President and his second term administration. Some of those instances including going to dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024 with then-fiancée, Lauren Sánchez. Bezos also attended Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and had a White House Meeting with him in July 2025.
Along with Amazon distributing Melania’s documentary, the company also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
