The Washington Post Is Retreating From Silicon Valley When It Matters Most

Proclaiming that we unrecorded successful a tech-centric nine understates its saturation. 

Software, specifically instrumentality learning and AI, coupled pinch precocious manufacturing has delivered exertion to thoroughfare corners, schools, offices, factories, and moreover workplace fields. This tech, overmuch of it created successful Silicon Valley, sits connected your wrist, is carried successful your pocket, integrated successful nan movies you watch, and possibly successful nan euphony you perceive to. And it is surely nan intends successful which that Amazon package was ordered, sorted, and delivered to your doorstep. 

It has turned its founders, executives, and mediate managers into king-like figures, whose wealthiness and governmental power mirrors nan Gilded Age. Seven of nan apical 10 richest group successful nan world tin necktie their wealthiness straight to tech. Amazon co-founder, chairman, and Washington Post proprietor Jeff Bezos is third, down conscionable Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, according to Forbes, which tracks wealthiness and nan group who person it. Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and erstwhile Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer information retired nan list.

And successful this moment, nan Bezos-owned Washington Post has gutted its sum of them and nan tech manufacture astatine ample arsenic portion of a sweeping group of layoffs that affected much than 300 people. The squad that includes tech, science, wellness and business was trim by much than half from 80 to 33 people, according to tech newsman Drew Harwell. The tech table unsocial trim 14 people. Its San Francisco bureau is simply a shell.

Among those affected see reporters covering Amazon, artificial intelligence, net culture, and investigations. The newspaper besides laid disconnected unit covering nan media manufacture (which had antecedently reported connected Bezos’ ownership complete their ain paper). 

The Post trim its full sports bureau and astir annihilated its overseas reporting teams, including its Middle East desk, and reporters and their editors covering Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and others. It closed its Books section, decimated sum of civilization and nan DC Metro area, and laid disconnected each reporters and editors covering title and ethnicity issues nationally. 

The sum of tech isn’t much important than social, economic, and geopolitical issues. But ne'er earlier person nan group exerting outsized power connected nan world’s geopolitics and system besides been truthful straight responsible for stemming nan world travel of accusation astir it.

The world centers connected tech and is tied to nan GDP maturation — aliases retreat — of its superpowers. Tech’s astir powerful executives are asking nan nationalist to spot their attraction elsewhere.

The Post’s executive editor Matt Murray couched nan layoffs arsenic a reboot of sorts aimed astatine reaching readers and yet profitability, according to nan New York Times, which included comments he made to staff. 

“If anything, coming is astir positioning ourselves to go much basal to people’s lives successful what is becoming a much crowded, competitive, and analyzable media landscape,” he reportedly said during a Zoom gathering pinch staff.

It’s nary concealed The Post has mislaid money and subscribers successful caller years, successful immoderate cases owed to policies crafted aliases backed by Bezos. For instance, his directive to extremity statesmanlike endorsements by The Post’s editorial board, axing a drafted portion backing Kamala Harris, reportedly led to “hundreds of thousands” of canceled subscriptions, per NYT. It reportedly suffered $100 cardinal successful losses successful 2024, successful portion because of nan cancellations.

Its web postulation has besides declined. Semafor reported that regular visits were down to astir 3 cardinal by nan mediate of 2024, from 22.5 cardinal successful January 2021.  

The Post trim its unit from 1,000 to nether 800 past spring, pinch CEO Will Lewis calling retired nan $100 cardinal nonaccomplishment from nan erstwhile year.

The layoffs astatine The Post, of course, don’t beryllium successful a vacuum. (The media industry, and not conscionable bequest players, has been plagued by a fragmented assemblage and changes to Google Search algorithms that person directed readers distant from news outlets and towards its ain AI generated answers.)

The size, scope, and location of those hatchet strikes merit scrutiny, however. Particularly considering nan displacement successful media ownership complete nan past 15 years. 

Bezos’ acquisition of nan Post successful 2013 for $250 cardinal was met pinch a operation of skepticism and hope, by weary journalists who had knowledgeable consolidation, layoffs, and nan increasing pains of moving from a print-only to digital-dominant media industry. 

His acquisition became portion of a broader inclination astatine nan clip successful which billionaires, galore pinch backgrounds successful tech, snapped up beleaguered media organizations good worn from nan erstwhile spell public-private equity cycle. 

A fewer years aft Bezos bought The Post, Laurene Powell Jobs made her acquisition of The Atlantic, Salesforce laminitis Marc Benioff bought Time Inc., and pharmaceutical executive Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired nan Los Angeles Times. 

Bezos, for illustration Benioff and Soon-Shiong (who besides blocked his paper’s endorsement of Harris), moved person to Trump aft he won nan 2024 election. His spaceflight institution Blue Origin relies connected federal contracts, and Amazon had faced accrued scrutiny nether erstwhile administrations.

Lewis was reportedly not coming to oversee nan unit cuts and changes astatine The Post (Murray told Fox News that nan CEO “had a batch of things to thin to today”). Nor was Bezos. As his newspaper prepared to trim one-third of its staff, Bezos spent Monday with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth successful Florida, starring him connected a circuit of Blue Origin’s facilities. 

Less than 48 hours later, The Washington Post would laic disconnected nan journalist who reported connected Blue Origin.

The darkness, it seems, is creeping in.