It was 8:30am on Tuesday. That was when the email was sent. The email that laid off 300 journalists at one of the oldest publications in the United States. Among those caught in this grim, morning surprise was Anita Smith, the sole Beirut health correspondent, whose insightful reports on public health crises had long been a lifeline in the region.
A friend who had just been fired showed me the email. It was so bland it could have been a password reset. It finished with the cheery line, “Your role has been eliminated.”
Not everyone received the email. About ninety people were summoned to a Zoom call, which was supposed to be more personal. The rest got a formal letter. The Zoom call, I’m told, had all the warmth of a parking ticket, and about as much charm.
Even senior staff did not know this was going to happen. They frantically started taking screenshots of their access and emails, not knowing how long they would last before being signed out.
It is no secret that newsrooms are shrinking in today’s age, but this time it was the geography that made it sting.
The people who lost their jobs weren’t sitting in Washington. They were scattered in Paris, Beirut, China, Ukraine. In Beirut, hospitals had just been bombed, but now there was no one left to report it. The locals were left guessing. When you cut the foreign correspondents, the world gets a lot bigger, and a lot darker.
I live in Kyiv. I have watched the streams of correspondents come and go, swapping tips on generators and air-raid drills. The Post’s people were different. They made a home here. They were the ones to actually stick it out.They were the ones who curried respect and authority.
And yet. They received no call or any semblance of next steps. They were quite literally stranded. One of them told me quietly, almost embarrassed, that they did not know how they were supposed to get home. It is incredibly expensive to report in Ukraine, so savings are thin. This is not an industry where those on the ground seek fortune. Neither do they receive it. As result, former Post staff have had to resort to launching a GoFundMe to help repatriate their international producers, translators, fixers, and drivers. People who had been reporting on a war were now literally crowdfunding to leave it.
The crowdfunding has reached nearly $200,000, and the link spread faster than any official statement from the Post. The backlash against Bezos and the mass tweets unsubscribing from the outlet and Amazon are growing. Reports estimate that around 20,000 people have cancelled their digital subscriptions in just 48 hours. Advertisers are also feeling the pressure, as some are reconsidering their partnerships in light of the public outcry. I asked journalists at the Post to write this article themselves, and the main reason they said no was that they hoped the backlash might change Bezos’s mind and have him hire them again.
But the point stands: one of the richest men on earth left them stranded, and I doubt he’s losing sleep over it. He spent $75 million on a vanity project, bought a paper, and hollowed it out. The Post even made a profit last year, but the cuts weren’t about money. They were about power.
Inside the Post, there’s been a flood of explanations and excuses, but the damage is done. The latest leaked memo blames everything from Google to failed video projects, and the need to ‘stabilize the business.’ It read like a postmortem written by the person still holding the knife. Instead of fixing the problems by investing in journalism, they just got rid of the journalists. None of it makes sense.
And as if that wasn’t enough drama, Will Lewis, the publisher who had overseen the Post’s restructuring, emailed staff to say he was stepping down. He thanked Bezos for his support. He praised him as an owner. He framed the layoffs as difficult but necessary, part of a transformation meant to secure the paper’s future.
I am told this went down like a lead balloon. Lewis didn’t even bother to show up for the layoff call, so he missed the fallout.
There is plenty we still don’t know about this circus. But the cuts were precise, almost ideological. Just look: it was the foreign bureaus and the war reporters who got the chop.
These are the people who annoy the powerful. They are the ones who speak truth to power. And they are the ones who got dropped.
They were dropped by a paper that used to be proud of exactly that. The motto was ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’ They quietly ditched it last year internally. Now, apparently, it’s all about ‘riveting storytelling for all of America.’ The questions begs, when the motto faded, did the budget for real reporting fade with it?
The image that sticks: journalists in dangerous places, staring at their inboxes, trying to work out if they can afford a flight home, or pay the rent, or renew their insurance. The paper they risked their lives for has decided that they are now anyone else’s problem but theirs.
Something ugly is happening to journalism, and you can see it everywhere. Even in the way these layoffs are delivered. Even in the way ‘sustainability’ is used as a polite word for abandonment.
When journalists are sacked by email, stranded in war zones, and have to crowdfund their way home, whilst billionaires pat themselves on the back, the crisis stops being theoretical. It gets personal.
And most of all, it decides who gets to tell the world’s hardest stories. When you scythe away on-the-ground reporting, then the ability to find the truth fades away.
And that is when democracy dies in darkness.
Dear Caolan,
How glad I am that you achieved to work independently. Your reporting has always been accurate, relevant and brilliantly presented. Where legacy media fails you are stepping in. Thank you ever so much.
Best wishes
Florian
👏👏👏💯💙🇺🇦💛
Oh dear. The reporters were left stranded in Ukraine? That is so cold, typical of MAGA. I’m gonna drop my Prime membership.
I think you are getting better and better at this all the time, keep on keeping on.
Stephen Wright
This is a attempt to silence the critics, of this administration, plain and simple. Even bigger than that it’s an attempt to silence future criticism of any kind. Because the truth is the enemy to them, and if they can silence the truth they can get away with whatever they want. People need to fight back speak up and resist. One way is canceling subscriptions to these millionaires like Beszos’s AMAZON. Another PROTEST. THANKS Caolan, you are right a big part of democracy has died 😒… 🌻🌻🌻🕶️☘️🇺🇸
Dear Caolan
As as Tim Snyder has reminded us over the past few years, the real heroes today are the journalists who report from the front lines. In this context, you, reporting on this, is the perfect epitath to what was a great newspaper. I cancelled my subscription three years ago and wish their was a viable escape from amazon.
Bravo to you and your courageous and brutally honest journalism.
Keep fighting for the truth. Keep defending democracy.
Algis Kuliukas
What strikes me most about this piece is the precision of the cuts. When a company fires randomly, it’s about money. When it fires strategically: war correspondents, foreign bureaus, health reporters in active conflict zones. It’s about something else entirely.
The Washington Post didn’t just lay off journalists. It severed the connective tissue between Americans and the rest of the world. The people who make power uncomfortable, who ask questions that can’t be answered with PR statements, who stand in bombed-out hospitals and refugee camps. Those are the ones who got the email.
And the cruelty of it: stranded in war zones, crowdfunding flights home while Bezos spends $75 million on vanity projects. That’s not a business decision. That’s a statement about whose stories matter and whose don’t.
Kevin’s right that this is about silencing criticism, but I think it goes deeper. It’s about making certain truths optional. If there’s no one in Beirut to report the bombings, did they really happen? If there’s no correspondent in Kyiv, does the war still matter to Americans?
The motto changed from “Democracy Dies in Darkness” to “Riveting Storytelling for All of America” But whose America? And whose stories get to be riveting?
When billionaires decide journalism is too expensive or too inconvenient, we all lose, not just the fired reporters.
The journalists you describe already have the audience, the trust, and now the public sympathy. Have you thought about helping them come together with you to build a new, independent publication, one that actually stands for what the Post used to?
I’d subscribe to that on day one. Just a thought.
The Washington Post has been listed as one of the top 8 factual media checking newspapers according to Originality.ai, Sherice Jacobs, Oct 2025 report.
Tragically this will no longer be the case. Sad news indeed for journalism.
Thank you Caolan for exemplary journalism. It is extremely important to support journalists that strive, often at great personal risk, to produce factual, well sourced news…you and others dedicated to protecting ethical journalistic standards are often our only source of light through very dark corridors.
Well I may not have a grand use of words, though I do truly appreciate the light you shine on the darkest evil shadows that hide in the corners of cowardice. Long reach your words, may the light continue to shine the brightest on your words and reporting. Few like you are left reporting independently and bringing the truth into the light.
Thank You #CaolanRobertson
I will cancel my WP subscription today. You are right, Caolan. Democracy has died in darkness
Thanks to Caolan for getting a story others just wrung their hands on Twitter about. Foreign reporters were not the only ones cut, although arguably the most important given all the world turmoil unleased by the US lately — local news (highly important in the nation’s capital) and even sports got cut. It’s hard to understand, looking at the wreckage, how Bezos or a new owner would rebuilt anything but a free shopper with big Walmart ads on this basis. What, they’re going to use AI to write foreign and domestic news?!
Also important to hear that the GoFundMe is going to be used for “the little guys” who make up the media ecology — fixers, drivers, etc. Staff reporters on salary might have extraction clauses in their contract or might have disaster insurance but freelancers would not have this.
Caolan, I only discovered you recently but even now, new to your reporting and insight, i can see that my instincts about you were correct. You are the real deal and I will follow and support your work endlessly. I am so glad you decided to take a break, for those of us who truely understand the importance of your relentless digging into the raw material of war journalism we want you safe and healthy in mind and spirit. My first concern is for your safety and overall wellbeing. Please take care of yourself first above all else, we need you. Thank you for caring about the world we live in with passion and commitment, you are a worrior of substance and intelligence.
It’s a terrible thing when “the yardstick” by which everything else was compared & measured amongst serious Journalists & people the world over is dying by a thousand cuts some of which pierce the “News bubble”… Reporting is An Enemy of The Regime.
The Regime hates The Truth!
It’s practically their “defining characteristic” at this stage.
Orwell: 1984 “The Party told you to ignore
the evidence of your eyes and ears”.
Journalists and Real Journalism are OUR (people of the world) Eyes & Ears.
Without “truthful Facts” we can make NO informed decision.
The Uber-rich have PROVEN that they’re NOT to be trusted by 99.99991% of the people on our planet.
The solution is so straightforward; Invest in Independent Truth Telling Journalism/Journalist!
No more LIES or ALTERNATIVE Facts & (the absolute BANE of modern journalism) no more Two-sides BS!
Stand up for something & the people WILL find you & Listen.
Good luck to Journalism & Tax The Uber-rich into irrelevance.
Slava Ukraini! Smert’ voroham! 💙🇺🇦💛