“Deeply alarmed”: Washington Post staff requests meeting with Jeff Bezos | Washington Post

More than 400 Washington Post staffers sent a letter to Jeff Bezos requesting a meeting with him at a time of widespread concern about the paper’s future.

The letter, signed by prominent journalists and correspondents and sent Tuesday evening, pleads for Bezos, known for rarely visiting the Post’s Washington bureau, to meet in person with bureau leaders.

“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and caused some of our most prominent colleagues to leave, with other departures imminent,” we can read in the letter. NPR was first to report the letter.

“It’s about maintaining our competitive advantage, restoring lost trust and reestablishing a relationship with management based on open communication,” he continues.

The letter asserts that these concerns are unrelated to Bezos’ recent decision to end his support for US presidential candidates, which the letter’s authors acknowledge is “the prerogative of the owner.”

The Post Office lost 250,000 subscribers, or 10% of its subscription base, following its decision not to approve. According to the Wall Street Journal, this was a major contributor to the paper’s whopping $100 million loss in 2024.

Digital visitors to the Washington Post website are also down, from 114 million in November 2020 to 54 million in November 2024.

The staff call also comes a week after the Postal Service laid off about 100 employees, a sign of the paper’s financial woes. The job cuts amount to approximately 4% of the publication’s staff.

The company’s chief executive, Will Lewis, has been at the center of unease among staff since he took over in November 2023.

The newsroom’s managing editor, Sally Buzbee, resigned in June after Lewis decided to reorganize the newsroom. Robert Winnett, the editor Lewis chose to replace her, withdrew after staff backlash.

Several opinion editors resigned following the announcement that the Post would no longer support presidential candidates. Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, left the newspaper after it refused to print her cartoon depicting billionaires bowing to Trump.

The Post endorsed all of Trump’s nominees for confirmation except Pete Hegseth for Defense Department, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Russell Vought for Office of Management and Budget and Robert F. Kennedy Jr for Secretary of Health.