Dramatic cuts to the Washington Post are being met with outrage as employees and the broader journalism community try to understand how such a storied institution could unravel so quickly.
The perceived lack of empathy from top management and the company’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos is compounding the fury.
As of Wednesday night, neither CEO Will Lewis nor Bezos had made any public statements about the cuts, which will impact roughly 30% of the Post’s staff.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” the Post’s celebrated former editor-in-chief Marty Baron said in a lengthy statement.
I so very very very much hope the 300 fired journalists unite to form a journalist/newspaper co-op, co-owned by all of them, with a public good mandate, not owned by a billionaire…
They’d have something rare: Instant credibility, massive talent & experience and a ton of audience curiosity. They’d be able to create a truly independent organization, maybe even bring in Bill Owens who resigned from 60 minutes, and if they needed $ for co-op lawyers etc, I’m 100% certain that they’d crush a GoFundMe campaign target…
Fuck if someone know anyone who is in the fired 300, pleaaaase plead to them to consider this…