Former Washington Post editor says Jeff Bezos has made the paper's crisis 'dramatically worse'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MS NOW News

Feb. 8, 2026, 2:08 PM EST


As The Washington Post reels from last week’s massive layoffs and the weekend’s leadership upheaval, former executive editor Martin Baron is pointing the finger at the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, accusing him of decisions that have deepened the Post’s financial and editorial crisis. The Post announced cuts to a third of the staff Wednesday, stunning the staff and readers of the outlet and the wider news industry.

Saturday, its chief executive and publisher Will Lewis resigned amid the turmoil “in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.” Lewis, who thanked only Bezos on the way out, will be succeeded by chief financial officer, Jeff D’Onofrio, the Post announced Saturday. Baron was the Post’s executive editor from 2013 until 2021, and the newspaper won 11 Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure. He was clear Sunday that he thinks the Amazon founder is to blame for the chaos.

“At The Washington Post, things have been made dramatically worse, I think, by the behavior of the owner,” Baron told Ali Velshi on Sunday, referring to Bezos. Bezos’ missteps, according to Baron, include his scrapping the paper’s editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 and more broadly dictating the newspaper’s editorial direction, his standing on stage with Trump at his inauguration last year and his acquiring the rights to the Melania Trump documentary that debuted in theaters last month.

“Changing the editorial page and the opinion pages generally, such that there are no commentators who are essentially left of center. That has really damaged the reputation of the Post,” Baron said. Baron said that while news organizations as a whole remain in peril as constant technological change puts more pressure on the industry, Bezos has made a bad situation signficantly worse.

Read more: https://www.ms.now/news/washington-post-jeff-bezos-marty-baron-layoffs

[SoFlaBro]

1. Everything fucking MAGA touches turns into a colossal first class fuck up

[FakeNoose]

2. Didn't Musk do pretty much the same thing to Twitter?

[sop]

3. One might think Bezos' plan all along was to put the Washington Post out of business and take a tax loss.

[Srkdqltr]

4. Of course he did

[LiberalArkie]

5. Duh. Put it under and declare a tax write-off

[bluestarone]

6. They continue to prove their goal is to

DESTROY everything American!!

[Deminpenn]

7. Read a comment from one WaPo employee that the current Bezos is different

from the one who originally bought the paper. I have to wonder if the change is tied to steroid or other PEDs that have transformed his body in the past few years. These drugs are known to cause personality changes for the worse.

[Martin68]

8. The editorial page in particular, and the raised profiler rightist extremists confirm that. I've long been a subscriber,

and it makes me sick.