\n<\/p>\n
The veteran Washington Post<\/a> journalist Bob Woodward<\/a> has said he is \u201ccrushed\u201d by the mass layoffs of hundreds of colleagues at the paper and said the impact would be felt by readers \u2013 noting both \u201cdeserve more\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI am crushed that so many of my beloved colleagues have lost their jobs and our readers have been given less news and sound analysis,\u201d Woodward said in his first public remarks on the cuts, which were shared<\/a> on X. \u201cThey deserve more.\u201d<\/p>\n Woodward said the Post had produced \u201cmany superb and excellent groundbreaking stories\u201d under executive editor Matt Murray. \u201cThere will be more,\u201d Woodward said. \u201cI will do everything in my power to help make sure the Washington Post<\/a> thrives and survives.\u201d<\/p>\n Woodward exposed the Watergate scandal with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, ending Richard Nixon\u2019s presidency in 1974 and winning the Post the Pulitzer prize. Their book about the scandal, All the President\u2019s Men, became a bestseller and was later turned into an Oscar-winning film of the same name starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.<\/p>\n Woodward worked for the Post for decades, reporting on every presidency since. He now holds an honorific associate editor title.<\/p>\n His statement comes after the storied newspaper laid off about a third of its staff<\/a> on Wednesday, or more than 300 journalists. The move has resulted in the shuttering of the paper\u2019s sports department and the shredding of teams covering local news, style and the world \u2013 not to mention its audio and video departments, which had already been battered by previous cuts. Commercial teams were also cut.<\/p>\n \u201cThe aspirations of this news organization are diminished,\u201d former editor Marty Baron told the Guardian<\/a>. \u201cI think that\u2019ll translate into fewer subscribers. And I hope it\u2019s not a death spiral, but I worry that it might be.\u201d<\/p>\n The Post lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the fall of 2024 after owner Jeff Bezos abruptly shelved its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris<\/a> for president days before the election won by Donald Trump. He also reoriented the paper\u2019s opinion pages<\/a> to a more narrow focus on supporting \u201cpersonal liberties and free markets\u201d.<\/p>\n At the time, Woodward and Bernstein decried Bezos\u2019s decision to spike the planned Harris endorsement and end the paper\u2019s history of endorsing presidential candidates as \u201csurprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process\u201d. They said in a joint statement that the move \u201cignores the Washington Post\u2019s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n The Post, Woodward told the New Yorker on Wednesday,<\/a> \u201clives and is doing an extraordinary reporting job on the political crisis that is Donald Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n Upon Bezos\u2019s 2013 acquisition of the paper, Woodward asked him why he had bought the Post. \u201cI finally concluded that I could provide runway \u2013 financial runway \u2013 because I don\u2019t think you can keep shrinking the business,\u201d Bezos said, according to the New Yorker<\/a>. \u201cYou can be profitable and shrinking. And that\u2019s a survival strategy, but it ultimately leads to irrelevance, at best. And, at worst, it leads to extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n A day after announcing the decimation of the Washington Post, Amazon announced plans to spend $200bn<\/a> on artificial intelligence and robotics in the coming year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n