SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Washington Post is cutting a third of its workforce and dramatically scaling back its newsroom. The Post is more than just a local paper. It is the newspaper of record for the nation's capital. It broke the Watergate scandal decades ago and continues to report aggressively on the Trump administration. The paper delivered some of the most important scoops during Trump's first term in the White House. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik joins us to discuss the layoffs and what they could mean for the public's access to information about our government. Hey, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: What is Post leadership doing and why is it doing it?
FOLKENFLIK: A little easier to say about what than why, although let's be clear, the Post's leadership has not been really clear-cut in their strategy ahead. So what they've done is they've scrapped the sports desk entirely. A couple sports reporters remain on features. They have really cut and largely gutted the foreign staff, although there will be - they say they hope to maintain presences in 12 bureaus but, you know - for example, the Ukraine bureau chief was laid off. The - another correspondent in a war zone got an email informing her she was laid off. The entire Middle East desk of The Washington Post was laid off. That's a lot. And they're doing away with the book section, and there's been deep cuts on the metro section, as well. So they've gone down from about 40-plus staffers to about a dozen.
They say they're doing this because readers are indicating they're not reading that kind of material as much. They've also - let's be fair - the Post, for the last five years - call it 4 1/2, five years - has engaged in losing many tens of millions of dollars a year - at its peak, lost $100 million. And its owner, Jeff Bezos, decided he didn't want to swallow those anymore.
DETROW: This is, however, one of the richest people in the world. He's a billionaire, the founder of Amazon and several other companies. What does it mean that somebody with such deep pockets as Jeff Bezos no longer wants to subsidize this paper to such a great extent?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, to be fair, look, this is - these losses are not isolated to the Post. Just today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced it was laying off 15% of its staff. It's owned by the Cox family, also billionaires, but not Bezos billionaires. You know, Bezos emerged as the owner in 2013. The Graham family sold the paper to him basically to say he's going to keep this as a sacred trust. And Bezos said, we've got to invest, but we have to innovate. Things can't stay the same. The paper has to find ways to be solvent. But it's going to remain a great - you know, for years and years to come, it will remain a great institution to further this - the American experiment in democracy. And he really embraced its bravado during the Trump years, even at a cost to the company.
In the last - call it 15 months, Bezos indicated the cost has been too great. And he's essentially sued for a kind of peace with President Trump, finding ways - for example, Amazon paid a million towards his inauguration. Jeff Bezos sat behind the president during his inauguration a year ago. And in other ways, he's been very embracing of the Trump administration. He hasn't affected the reporting, but he has affected it through these cuts.
DETROW: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: And I think he's kind of walked away from it as a defining element.
DETROW: We got about 30 seconds, but what do you think the impact is of these cuts to the audiences and also to the wider public?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, I think it's twofold. One is that it really kind of helps to unravel the identifiers that knit together Washington, D.C. and the greater community - local coverage, accountability coverage of local governments, sports, school boards, weather, traffic. These things kind of bind people together.
And secondly is the broader public, the question of, are you going to provide sophisticated, in-depth and intensive accountability reporting on the forces of government? They say they're going to continue to do that. But can you do that, as well, when you don't have people in the Middle East reporting on, say, things that are happening in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia with their business ties to the president and his family. There are other ways in which you're just saying, are they keeping true to this mission, or are they damaging something that has been so important to the country for so many decades?
DETROW: NPR's David Folkenflik, thanks so much.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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