‘Few can do accountability reporting’: Washington Post’s India bureau joins fight against ‘job cuts’

Staffers at the Washington Post have begun a public campaign urging owner Jeff Bezos to reconsider potential layoffs that they say could significantly shrink the paper’s international reporting network.

Using the hashtag #SaveThePost, reporters across global bureaus have warned that foreign coverage may face substantial reductions. Roughly 60 members of the international staff have written to Bezos, arguing that scaling back overseas reporting would weaken both the newspaper and the public-interest journalism it produces.

Jobs cuts at the paper have been long-rumoured but now appear to be close, with staffers expecting the ax to drop in early February – though nothing is certain, according to the Guardian. The sections most likely to be affected include sports, metro and foreign, according to staffers who spoke with the British outlet.

On Sunday, foreign correspondents wrote a letter to Bezos, first reported by The New York Times. “Our coverage – thanks to your investment – shapes conversation and global policy at the highest levels each day. Our reporters on the ground drove exclusive coverage during pivotal moments of recent history. Cutting this deeply sourced, battle-hardened and tireless staff would hinder The Post’s ability to respond to the biggest news developments on the horizon.” They warned that the “newsroom depends on our authority, cultivated through face-to-face source meetings around the world – work that simply cannot be replicated from Washington.”

The Post has not commented on the speculation or the letter.

This comes after years of contraction at the paper. Following a period of growth after Bezos bought the Post in 2013, the newsroom has seen rounds of job cuts and buyouts. The paper also lost subscribers after Bezos chose not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential election. He later reshaped the opinion section, prompting the exit of several editors and columnists.

For many Post staffers, the stakes of job cuts are immediate.

Pranshu Verma, the paper’s India bureau chief, explained what the paper’s presence means in a constrained media environment: “Since I came to India early last summer to be the The Post’s India bureau chief, one thing was abundantly clear: in India’s media ecosystem very few outlets can do accountability reporting without fear of government censure. The Post is one of them. Since August, we showed the ways Indian billionaires got treated far better than others; the role of Indian conglomerates in fueling Russia's war in Ukraine; India's draconian deportation campaign of Muslims to Bangladesh and stories unpacking the breakdown in diplomatic relations between Washington and New Delhi. We in New Delhi want to keep doing our jobs so The Post readers can understand the South Asia region better — a wish we hope you share. #SaveThePost.”

Clement Perruche, a journalist with the French financial daily Les Echos in India, wrote: “The Washington Post, like other major international media outlets, writes the articles that the local press no longer dares to write, for fear of exposing itself to government reprisals. We need foreign media in India.”

Nitin Sethi of the Reporters’ Collective linked the moment to the steady erosion of Indian newsrooms. It’s “superb” to see journalists “come together publicly to try to reclaim the profession of journalism back from the business of media ownership”, he wrote. “We in India have seen how our newsrooms hollowed out as owners of media turned them into vehicles of their aspirations with little or no pushback from editors and elders in the profession. The balance decisively shifted, at the cost of the profession and public interest, to favour the vested interest of the powerful and to leave the fourth pillar of our democracy too weak to do its job, holding up democratic rights of the citizens at large.”

Meanwhile, across bureaus, correspondents described both the dangers of their work and the cost of losing it.

Mexico bureau chief Samantha Schmidt said international reporters “risk our safety to investigate authoritarian governments” and that their “on-the-ground reporting is more critical than ever.”

Ukrainian bureau chief Siobhan O’Grady appealed directly to Bezos, saying her team would “never forget” his support for coverage of the Russia–Ukraine war, and urging him to “please believe in us and #SavethePost”.

Global economics correspondent David J Lynch said the Post still has one of the last “robust” foreign reporting staffs. “Eliminating it to save money would come at the cost of an informed citizenry, something that has never been more important,” he said.

Others tied the campaign to broader pressures on the newsroom. Recently, reporters rallied behind colleague Hannah Natanson after the FBI searched her Virginia home and seized devices as part of a classified information probe.

There are also signs of tightening budgets elsewhere. A memo indicated the Post would not send a full sports team to cover the Winter Olympics.

The Guardian reported that some current and former Post staffers who spoke with the outlet “conveyed a sense that Bezos, who acquired the Post in 2013 from family ownership, is missing in action”. 

“Notably, Bezos did not comment after FBI agents raided a Post reporter’s home on 14 January…The rumored cuts also come at a time when the company that Bezos founded, Amazon, is reportedly spending lavishly to promote a documentary on Melania Trump that its MGM Studios had already paid $40m to acquire. The online publication Puck reported on Friday that the company additionally plans to spend $35m to market the film and bring it to theaters – though it is not expected to be a blockbuster.”

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