Washington Post losses top $100 million in 2025; 30% staff cuts follow years of overspending: Report

Mounting financial strain at The Washington Post intensified in 2025, with losses exceeding $100 million last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, a sharp setback that precipitated the newspaper’s decision to slash about 30 per cent of its workforce earlier this month.

The red ink marks the third consecutive year of steep losses. The Post lost roughly $100 million in 2024 and $77 million in 2023, reflecting a sustained slide in the economics of one of America’s most influential newsrooms, the report said.

Owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Post built its global reputation on its Watergate investigation and publication of the Pentagon Papers. Yet even that legacy has not insulated it from structural shifts in the media business, as digital advertising fragments and audiences increasingly consume news via social platforms and aggregators.

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Years of overspending come under scrutiny

In their first major address to employees since the layoffs, acting Chief Executive and Publisher Jeff D’Onofrio and Executive Editor Matt Murray laid bare what they described as years of financial imbalance and declining productivity, the report said.

According to the report, at a staff meeting on Wednesday, D’Onofrio told newsroom employees that expenses had outstripped revenue each year between 2022 and 2025. The gap, he suggested, was partly the result of an aggressive hiring push in earlier years, when the company added hundreds of staffers in anticipation of sustained digital growth, the report said.

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While he did not spell out the full magnitude of the latest losses during the meeting, people present told the Wall Street Journal management acknowledged that the cost base had expanded faster than revenues.

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The number of stories published by the Post has fallen 42 per cent since 2020, D’Onofrio said, even as newsroom costs in 2025 were 16 per cent higher than five years earlier.

Editorial reset amid painful cuts

Murray, who previously led The Wall Street Journal and assumed the top editorial role at the Post in June 2024, acknowledged the “painfulness of the moment” following the sweeping job reductions, the report said.

In a notable shift in tone, he sought to recalibrate expectations inside the newsroom. The Post, he said, would no longer attempt to chase every development or compete on sheer volume.

“We don’t want or need to do every story or jump on everything that happens,” Murray said. “We’re not a paper of record; there’s no such thing anymore in today’s world.”

Instead, he signalled a sharper editorial focus aimed at producing journalism that is “distinctive, urgent, must-read,” even if that means publishing fewer stories overall.

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Strategic overhaul in the works

D’Onofrio, who stepped into the publisher’s role earlier this month following the departure of CEO and publisher Will Lewis, indicated that a broader strategic reset is being crafted.

“Bear with me, because that will take some time and obvious care, but I’m keen to get going on it,” he told staff, as reported by the newspaper. “And we are going to go after it, and we’re going to go after it hard, because we owe it to this place to do that.”