Washington Post lays off race and ethnicity reporters
After cutting around one-third of staff, the Washington Post says it will concentrate on “areas that demonstrate authority” — with a national reporting desk that is now overwhelmingly white.
Yesterday, over 300 Washington Post staff learned they were losing their jobs in one of the Post’s largest layoffs in its 145-year history.
Some of those who lost their jobs are reporters whose positions were created in 2020, when then-publisher and CEO Fred Ryan, said the Post would “use our powerful platform to address issues of race in this historic moment and over the long-term.” According to former Post race and ethnicity reporter Emmanuel Felton, he, the other reporter on his team covering race, and the editor of race coverage on the Post’s national desk were all laid off.
That means, Felton said in a post on X, “the team covering America beyond D.C. is now 90% white.”
This shift to the Post’s national desk happened less than a week after independent Black journalists Georgia Fort, founder of BLCK Press, and former CNN columnist Don Lemon were arrested by federal agents after covering anti-Immigrations and Customs Enforcement demonstrations. And it follows a slew of Black journalists and columnists leaving the Post — either of their own volition or after being fired. The Post paused its newsletter on “candid conversations about race and identity in 21st century America” — another creation after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 prompted national media conversation about the systemic harms of news coverage about Black communities.
Among the other changes: The sports desk was eliminated ahead of the Olympics. The climate desk shrank from a previously ambitious effort to grow it. International correspondents lost their jobs in the midst of an active war zone. Several tech reporters — including the paper’s Amazon reporter — were let go.
In a note sent to the newsroom, Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray said the Post would now “concentrate on areas that demonstrate authority, distinctiveness, and impact.”
The Objective reached out to the Post for comment on laying off national reporters covering race and ethnicity amid the current presidential administration’s effort to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion policies intended for desegregation. There has not been a response from the publication.
The Post has shrunk by more than 400 workers in the past 3 years following a 4% staff reduction and buyouts last year, and a spate of broader editorial reprioritization first heralded by owner Jeff Bezos’ blockage of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president during her 2024 campaign.
New Republic staff writer and former Post weekly opinion columnist Perry Bacon Jr. was among those who critiqued the Post’s retrenchment on caring about racial inequality after the paper fired former long-time columnist and editor Karen Attiah over Bluesky posts following Christian nationalist commentator Charlie Kirk’s death.
“The political right is trying to basically outlaw any discussion of racial inequality — and news organizations are trying to appease the political right,” Bacon wrote. “An America where Black people, journalists, and Black journalists lose political power is one where inequality, racism, authoritarianism and other ills will be rampant.”
The Post has had a mixed track record in supporting its Black staffers, with a 2022 Post Guild report written by the union’s Black caucus highlighting that the paper has “still never proportionately reflected Chocolate City — the first city in the nation to become majority-Black.”
Related: Q&A: Karen Attiah says her firing shows mainstream media still fails at talking about race
But Karen Attiah, who had been with the Post for nearly 11 years when she was fired, told The Objective in October last year that the paper “used to do a much, much, much better job at hiring and retaining Black talent.”
“Now they don’t seem to care,” she said. “I think one worries about the pipeline. It’s not just Black journalists, now young journalists, diverse journalists don’t see a place for themselves at these papers.”
Members of the Post Guild, the newspaper’s union, have started two funds for impacted colleagues: one for Guild-represented colleagues and one for workers ineligible for Guild representation, including international correspondents, translators, and researchers. Nearly 8,750 readers have followed the Guild’s call to write to Bezos, Murray, and Post publisher Will Lewis to “help save the Washington Post.”
“A newsroom cannot be hollowed out without consequences for its credibility, its reach, and its future,” the Post Guild wrote in a statement Wednesday. “If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will.”
James Salanga is the co-director of The Objective.
Edits and copy edits by Gabe Schneider.
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