Journalists at The Washington Post have made unprecedented public appeals to owner Jeff Bezos to reconsider imminent layoffs that could substantially shrink the paper’s newsroom and weaken its core reporting functions.

Facing reports that as many as several hundred positions may be cut, foreign correspondents and other newsroom staff have taken to social media and direct correspondence to plead with Bezos to protect the newspaper’s capacity for international and investigative journalism and to preserve its institutional strength.

These appeals come as mounting financial pressures and declining advertising and subscription revenues prompt management to reassess staffing and coverage priorities. 

Members of the Post’s foreign desk, whose reporting spans conflict zones and global crises, sent a collective letter to Bezos expressing alarm that proposed layoffs would undermine the paper’s ability to cover the world’s most consequential events.

They emphasised the distinctive value of on-the-ground reporting and offered to collaborate on cost-saving measures that would retain crucial talent. Correspondents cited risks they regularly face, including reporting from war-torn regions, and underscored that cutting deeply sourced foreign coverage would diminish the paper’s relevance at a time of heightened global geopolitical turbulence.

In parallel, several reporters launched a broader social media campaign using the hashtag “#SaveThePost,” directly tagging Bezos with personal appeals to spare jobs and uphold the paper’s mission.

Among those participating were bureau chiefs and White House desk reporters who highlighted the integrated nature of the newsroom’s work and warned that weakening major desks such as sports, metro and foreign would erode institutional capacity. The campaign reflects widespread anxiety within the newsroom about communicated uncertainty and the absence of clear guidance from leadership on how proposed cuts will be implemented. 

The backdrop to these appeals includes reports that the Post recently scrapped plans to send a large contingent of journalists to cover the 2026 Winter Olympics, a decision later partially reversed as only a reduced team was dispatched. The potential layoffs, reported by industry sources, coincide with years of financial retrenchment despite past rounds of buyouts and staff departures.

For many at the paper, the struggle is not merely about job security but about maintaining the newsroom’s capacity to deliver rigorous, fact-based journalism at a moment of intense global political and social developments. The Washington Post and Bezos have not issued public comment on the specific layoff plans or the staff’s appeals.