The Washington Post moved Wednesday at the behest of owner Jeff Bezos to make deep cuts to every department in the newsroom.
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Murray said the Post will shutter its sports desk, while keeping some sports writers who will write feature stories. It will likewise close its Books section and suspend the signature podcast Post Reports. The international desk will shrink dramatically. Murray said the decisions did not reflect the quality of the work.
The Metro section will be restructured, ensuring a "healthy presence for local subscribers," he said. According to a Metro staffer who was just laid off, there will be about a dozen people left on the desk. That's down from more than 40. (The staffer did not want to be named because negotiations over severance are ongoing.)
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Several former editors said it appeared the paper was seeking to compete more with such specialized publications as Politico and Punchbowl rather than The New York Times. And numerous Post reporters and editors blamed their chief executives under Bezos — first Fred Ryan, a former Politico CEO — and then publisher and CEO Will Lewis, the former chief executive of the Wall Street Journal and a top executive at the British Telegraph and at Rupert Murdoch's London newspaper division.