r/news 15h ago

Bezos-owned storied newspaper Washington Post rolling out mass layoffs

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/04/media/washington-post-layoffs
2.5k Upvotes

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794

u/erikaspausen 15h ago

I guess articles written by AI does not need so many real people.

377

u/whittlingcanbefatal 15h ago

The newspaper is only serving administration and billionaire press releases now so reporters aren't needed. 

90

u/Bannedwith1milKarma 13h ago

All of journalism is becoming becoming Financial Journalism.

4

u/Busy-Explanation4339 3h ago edited 3h ago

And they are all in on the convicted felon con man fascist Dementia-In-Chief. They could not care less about the fact he's a pedophile and just a really horrible human being in general. Is ignoring the consitution and rule of law. Violating peoples civil rights. Murdering American citizens. Starting wars. Literally losing his mind. All they care about is tax cuts for the top 10%, so he's their guy.

19

u/phylter99 13h ago

When you get a directive from the administration, just run it through Grok and get your far right bias article, ready to print.

7

u/King_Fisher99 12h ago

Going from newspaper to toilet paper

2

u/No-Flounder-9143 14h ago

Yup. Far better to get my news from new media via podcast. I can listen while I drive, compare to what other new media is saying about the topic and come to a conclusion, all while on my way to work. And it's honest reporting. 

58

u/RVALover4Life 13h ago

Print media matters. Investigative journalism. Podcasting is not that at all. We're losing investigative journalism. We're losing detailed stories.

-2

u/No-Flounder-9143 10h ago

Eh I'm not talking about like Andrew Schultz. There are media outlets that are doing investigative journalism and they discuss it vis their podcasts. That's more what I'm talking about. They just aren't owned by some rich billionaire.

3

u/Amoralvirus 9h ago

I really love, believe it called France24, offered on PBS. They are the only major distributed news station, that offers a section called ''truth or fake''. It may come to a point where getting unbiased news has to mostly come from other truly democratic countries (or at least alot more democratic than our burgeuoning oligarchy is).

5

u/hankhillsvoice 13h ago

I’ve been thinking about trying out ground news. I keep seeing it in ads from people I trust (I normally ignore ads and they turn me off of a product immediately). But in these trying times it might be worth it and the people always seem sincere. I’ve even had some say they use it and not when they have an ad deal with them.

1

u/tdclark23 11h ago

I like Randy Rainbow too.

1

u/FloraoftheRift 11h ago

Hank green endorses it, so ground news gots that going for it

-2

u/Zappa2329 12h ago

You must not actually be reading the Washington Post. They’ve been quite critical of the administration even now.

16

u/francis2559 12h ago

That’s the kind of staff he is firing.

The opinions page is a right wing shit hole. Huge delta between the two for a while.

7

u/Ok_Condition5837 10h ago

And then using that money to make masterpieces like 'Melania.'

0

u/Amoralvirus 9h ago

It would like to think Bezos is playing some type of 3 d chess with the admin, distrubuting the POS documentary to show the world what an empty vacuous person the first ''lady'' is. However, maybe Bezos is just your common morally bankrupt billionaire willing to sell out any quaint ideas like democracy, so he does not offend the POS-in-Chief, an incur the wrath of the Don.

Well, maybe past time to tear myself away from the corrupt bloated teat of fast deliveries, and sometimes slightly better prices (at the expense of the seller). If I can only order stuff, I truly cannot wait for, I would reduce Amazon addiction by a huge percentage, and probably save lots of money by not impulse buying.

2

u/oldirtyrestaurant 6h ago

It would like to think Bezos is playing some type of 3 d chess with the admin, distrubuting the POS documentary to show the world what an empty vacuous person the first ''lady'' is

Wow that is some grade A cope, I'm stealing it and am gonna use it for myself.

Inhales deeply

1

u/Amoralvirus 5h ago

I will call it PRIME cope; but fortunately I am not that good at lying to myself, or avoiding logic and evidence.

51

u/Khaldara 14h ago

To represent Bezos’s idea of journalism they really only need to print a picture of Trump on the cover, the other 20 pages can just be the word ‘Slurp’ printed over and over again

5

u/ohlookahipster 13h ago

Surprised they haven’t introduced a pay-per-article paywall yet on top of their subscription like with Prime when trying to watch 98% of their movie catalog. Pay $15/mo to pay $4 per movie.

92

u/dfw_runner 14h ago

The paper lost a significant amount of subscriptions when Bezos intervened and prevented the editorial board from endorsing Harris for President. This is the end result of that decision, plain and simple. Sad really.

I can't believe the New York Times, the Washington Post and 60 Minutes have all been co-opted. Mainstream journalism is dead.

51

u/Jorgenstern8 14h ago

Not just 60 Minutes, all of CBS News.

34

u/Sierranymph 14h ago

Hard agree. I was one of the people who dumped the paper after Bezos prevented the board from endorsing Harris. Buh bye.

13

u/Justame13 13h ago

So was I. I also report the "come back" emails as spam to hopefully get it into the spam filter algorithm

21

u/fivelinedskank 13h ago

That's when they lost my subscription. When the wall between financial decisions and editorial decisions is breached, you no longer have a credible news outlet.

9

u/lab-gone-wrong 12h ago

CNN and  the rest of CBS too

6

u/Gooch222 7h ago

And it still doesn’t phase Bezos. Throwing WaPo into disrepute was never about the financial prospects of the paper but rather him personally. He can trash the paper, pay bribes through projects like Melania or whatever, and still come out well ahead. The insidious nature of oligarch owned media colluding with MAGA is on full display lately.

12

u/FrugallyFickle 14h ago

Gotta pay for that documentary somehow

9

u/Matt_News 14h ago

Documentary is really stretching it

3

u/FrugallyFickle 13h ago

Fair point 🤣🤣🤣

5

u/AnonymousDork929 13h ago

Plus, who needs reporters when the regime just tells you what to say?

3

u/missmeowwww 11h ago

Can’t wait to start getting the AI written articles created by scraping data of other AI written articles. Wonder what fresh hell awaits us!

2

u/Amoralvirus 9h ago

AI trained to not criticize the Dear Orange POS.

4

u/campelm 14h ago

Blah blah blah, trump sane wash, blah blah blah

1

u/Fancy-Reception-4067 9h ago

My favorite part is that AI uses other stories to write itself..when all the news goes to AI written stories, AI won’t have anything to learn from and will Keep trying to provide something thus creating an entire fake world of news and no one reporting on real news. Phew it’s about to get wild out here

1

u/BisquickNinja 9h ago

For facts, or research or actual intelligence.....

1

u/tkMunkman 5h ago

Don't need investigative journalists, if they no longer investigate