The Washington Post’s financial struggles are no longer whispers inside media circles — they are headline-grabbing figures. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Post lost more than $100 million in 2025 alone. That follows reported losses of roughly $80 million in both 2023 and 2024. Add it together, and the once-dominant newspaper has burned through approximately a quarter of a billion dollars in just three years.
The red ink has forced major changes. Owner Jeff Bezos, who purchased the paper in 2013, has reportedly overseen sweeping layoffs after years of absorbing mounting losses. Estimates suggest between 350 and 375 newsroom employees were let go — nearly 45 percent of the editorial staff.
This week, acting Chief Executive and Publisher Jeff D’Onofrio and Executive Editor Matt Murray addressed employees in their first staff meeting since the cuts. Their message, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, was blunt: years of overspending and declining productivity put the company in its current position.
D’Onofrio reportedly acknowledged that expenses outpaced revenue from 2022 through 2025, in part because the company hired hundreds of additional staffers in prior years. Yet even as staffing levels rose, output fell sharply. The number of news stories published by the Post has declined by 42 percent since 2020, while newsroom costs in 2025 were 16 percent higher than in 2020.
That combination — higher costs paired with significantly lower production — is a formula few businesses can sustain, especially in a media environment already strained by shrinking print circulation, digital subscription fatigue, and aggressive competition from alternative outlets.
The Post’s expansion during the late 2010s and early 2020s came during a politically charged era when national politics drove record readership across legacy media platforms. The paper leaned heavily into that moment, branding itself as a watchdog institution and expanding coverage across politics and culture. But as the political climate shifted and subscription growth slowed, the economics appear to have shifted as well.
Media analysts have long warned that scaling up editorial operations during peak news cycles carries risk if demand later stabilizes or declines. The Post’s recent numbers suggest that recalibration did not happen quickly enough.
The layoffs signal a strategic reset. Leadership appears focused on aligning costs with output and revenue, an adjustment many traditional media organizations have faced as advertising models weaken and audiences fragment across platforms.
Whether the cuts and restructuring will be enough remains an open question. The Post retains brand recognition, national reach, and substantial resources compared to smaller outlets. But the data cited by its own executives paints a sobering picture: fewer stories, higher expenses, and sustained losses.
