I have no inside information on this but looking at it from the outside it looks like employees at the Washington Post are feeling a bit panicky about the direction the paper has been headed lately.

All of this started before the election when owner Jeff Bezos told the editorial board not to endorse Kamala Harris. Even though the LA Times had done the same thing first, the response at the Post was much more volatile. In a matter of days, 200,000 people canceled their subscriptions and several people quit. This was bad news for a newspaper that the publisher had previously described as being in a financial hole.

Since then, things have not improved. On the contrary, a Post cartoonist resigned earlier this month after editors rejected a cartoon showing Bezos and others bowing down before a statue of Trump.

This Ann Telnaes's cartoon draft depicting Jeff Bezos, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Mickey Mouse at Donald Trump's feet was rejected by the WashingtonPost. Let's share it as much as we can. #Trump pic.twitter.com/CQEkGr4CzK

— Alex Grech (@AlxMalta) January 11, 2025

It was only a few days later that the paper announced more layoffs.

The Washington Post on Tuesday laid off roughly 100 employees across its business division, the latest indication of the newspaper’s financial woes after subscribers and staffers revolted over owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The cuts amounted to roughly 4% of the publication’s staff and did not affect the newsroom, a spokesperson for the Post said.

Those layoffs came on top of several reports leaving for other jobs.

In December, Matea Gold, the Post’s managing editor, shared she was leaving the Post for The New York Times. Last week, The Atlantic poached political reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, the Times scooped up White House reporter Tyler Pager, the Wall Street Journal nabbed investigative politics reporter Josh Dawsey, and Puck poached veteran journalist Leigh Ann Caldwell.

And of course, they just lost Jen Rubin who may or may not have left willingly. With all those recent problems in mind, today we're learning that 400 of the Post's remaining staffers are asking Jeff Bezos to visit the paper to talk about its future.

A recent exodus of talent from The Washington Post has prompted more than 400 of its staffers to send an unusual letter to the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, expressing alarm over the newspaper’s direction and asking him to intervene.

The employees, including some of the Post’s best-known correspondents, are asking Bezos – who rarely visits the Washington, DC, newsroom – to come and meet with The Post’s leaders.

The letter, obtained by CNN on Wednesday, said “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 prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent.”

Again, it sounds like they are getting a big panicky as people keep walking out the door either voluntarily or not. It probably feels like the place is in danger of falling apart. But according to the NY Times, all of this is really about their current boss who the newsroom does not like.

The company’s chief executive, Will Lewis, has been the focus of widening discontent at The Post for months. The newsroom’s top editor, Sally Buzbee, stepped down in June after he decided to reorganize the newsroom. Mr. Lewis’s choice to replace her, Robert Winnett, withdrew from consideration after a staff backlash.

They got rid of one prospective editor last year and now they are essentially asking Bezos to get rid of Lewis as well even though he's only been there for a year. Lewis's job is to turn the paper around and try to make it profitable.

My guess, and that's all it is, is that the employees asking for this meeting just hope Bezos will waltz in and  reassure them all is well and that he will spend any amount of money to protect them. But he's not going to do that because the Post is losing so much money that even a billionaire like Bezos can't ignore it.

The left-leaning publication drew about 2.5 million to 3 million daily users to its site last summer, a fraction of the 22.5 million daily visitors at its peak when Biden took office in January 2021, according to internal data shared with Semafor.

The plummeting site traffic led the business to lose around $100 million on weak subscription and ad revenue in 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported.

They lost $100 million dollars last year. Given the scale of that loss, I'm surprised only 100 staffers were laid off last week. The remaining staffers are probably right to panic because it's hard to imagine them turning this sinking ship around by next year. The more likely outcome is additional people leaving and more layoffs to come.