Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post is set to axe dozens of staff from its business division this week, according to a report by Status.
Status reporter Oliver Darcy wrote that the layoffs were slated to his the media outlet's business division, with one person familiar with the matter saying the cuts would be deep and impact dozens of other employees.
Other top staffers have already fled the beleaguered newspaper, including star reporter Josh Dawsey who left for a job at the Wall Street Journal.
The rumour comes just days after the newspaper refused to publish a satirist sketch depicting the Amazon billionaire bowing before a statue of Donald Trump, leading to Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes’ resignation.
For context, Telnaes also drew in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, LA Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Disney’s Mickey Mouse doing the same thing alongside him.
"I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations - and some differences - about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I've never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at," Telnaes wrote on her Substack blog.
The beleaguered Post’s troubles had already taken a big hit mid-last year when Bezos blocked the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris ahead of the November election - leading to over a quarter of a million subscription cancellations.
Bezos purchased the institutional newspaper in 2013 for $250m, sending shockwaves across the U.S. media landscape and ending the 80-year stewardship of the Graham family which brought the Post to national prominence during their tenure.
The Washington Post is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company (GHC), which trades on the NYSE. At the time of writing, the share price for GHC is US$888.89, with a slight decrease to $875.99 in after-hours trading. Its market capitalisation is approximately $3.85 billion.