To say we live in a technology-centric society is an understatement.
Software, especially machine learning and artificial intelligence, combined with advanced manufacturing has brought technology to street corners, schools, offices, factories, and even farms. This technology, much of it created in Silicon Valley, sits on your wrist, is carried in your pocket, integrated into the movies you watch and perhaps the music you listen to. And it is certainly the means by which the Amazon package was ordered, sorted and delivered to your doorstep.
It has turned their founders, executives and middle managers into kings, whose wealth and political influence reflect the golden age. Seven of the 10 richest people in the world can link their wealth directly to technology. Washington Post co-founder, chairman and owner Jeff Bezos is third, behind Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. according to Forbeswhich tracks wealth and the people who have it. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer round out the list.
Now, right now, the Bezos-owned Washington Post has dropped its coverage of them and the tech industry at large as part of a sweeping series of layoffs affecting more than 300 people. The group, which includes technology, science, health and business, has shrunk by more than half — from 80 to 33 people — according to the Post tech reporter Drew Harwell;. The technology office alone cut 14 people. His office in San Francisco is a shell.
Those affected include journalists covering Amazon, artificial intelligence, internet culture and investigations. The paper also fired staff covering the media industry (who had previously referred to Bezos’ ownership of their own paper).
The Post cut its entire sports bureau and nearly wiped out its foreign reporting teams, including its Middle East bureau, and its reporters and editors covering Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Turkey and more. He closed the Books section, decimated coverage of culture and the Washington, DC metro area, and fired all the reporters and editors who covered issues of race and ethnicity nationally.
Covering technology is not more important than social, economic and geopolitical issues. But never before have the people who wield enormous influence over the world’s geopolitics and economy also been so directly responsible for restricting the global flow of information about it.
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But even as the world focuses on technology and is tied to the GDP growth — or decline — of its superpowers, tech’s most powerful executives are asking the public to turn their attention elsewhere.
The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, framed the layoffs as a reboot aimed at reaching readers and ultimately profitability. according to the New York Timeswhich included comments he made to staff.
“If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to be more relevant to people’s lives in a more crowded, competitive and complex media landscape,” he was quoted as saying during a Zoom meeting with staff.
It’s no secret The Post has lost money and subscribers in recent years, in some cases because of policies created or supported by Bezos. For example, his directive to end presidential endorsements by The Post’s editorial board, deleting a draft endorsing Kamala Harris, reportedly led to “hundreds of thousands” of canceled subscriptions, according to the New York Times. It reportedly suffered losses of $100 million in 2024, in part due to the cancellations.
His web traffic has too he refused. Semaphore was mentioned that daily visits fell to around 3 million by mid-2024, from 22.5 million in January 2021.
The Post cut its staff from 1,000 to fewer than 800 last spring, with CEO Will Lewis citing a $100 million loss from the previous year.
Layoffs at The Post, of course, do not exist in a vacuum. The media industry, and not just the incumbents, is plagued by a fragmented audience and changes to Google Search algorithms that have driven readers away from news outlets and toward its own AI-generated answers.
However, the size, scope and location of these cuts are worth considering – particularly given the shift in media ownership over the past 15 years.
Bezos’ 2013 acquisition of the Post for $250 million was met with a mixture of skepticism and hope from jaded journalists who had experienced the consolidation, layoffs and growing pains of transitioning from a digital-print-dominated media industry.
His acquisition became part of a broader trend at the time in which billionaires, many with tech backgrounds, snapped up beleaguered media organizations worn down by the previous public-private equity round.
A few years after Bezos bought The Post, Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff bought Time Inc. and pharmaceutical director Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the Los Angeles Times.
Bezos, like Benioff and Soon-Shiong (who also blocked his paper’s endorsement of Harris), moved closer to Trump after he won the 2024 election. His spaceflight company Blue Origin relies on federal contractsand Amazon has faced increased scrutiny under previous administrations.
Lewis was reportedly absent to oversee staff cuts and changes at The Post (Murray he told Fox News that the CEO “had a lot to attend to today”). Neither was Bezos. As his paper prepared to cut a third of its staff, Bezos spent Monday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Florida, taking him on a tour of Blue Origin’s facilities.
Less than 48 hours later, the Washington Post would fire it journalist WHERE was mentioned at Blue Origin.
Darkness, it seems, is creeping in.
