The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has announced massive job layoffs, totalling close to a third of the masthead's staff.
The cuts include 300 of the approximately 800 journalists in The Post's newsroom, with executive editor Matt Murray describing the move as “painful".
This drastic cutback comes as many major media outlets in the United States are under pressure from the Trump administration, frequently in the form of lawsuits over coverage about the President.
Bezos, who bought the masthead in 2013, has grown closer to President Donald Trump during his second term in the White House.
"The company's structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product," said Murray in a note to employees.
“And even as we produce much excellent work, we too often wrote from one perspective, for one slice of the audience.”
Veteran journalist and executive editor of the Post until 2021, Marty Baron, said the layoffs “ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations”.
Included in the cuts are most of the overseas stationed reporters, including all Middle East correspondents and the Kyiv-based Ukraine correspondent.
The daily podcast, Post Reports, has been suspended, and the sports, graphics and local news departments were heavily scaled back as well.
