Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday responded to criticism of the brutal round of layoffs at his paper earlier this year, saying it needs to maintain relevancy and turn a profit regardless of his wealth.
Several departments were gutted, including its sports, metro and books sections, as well as its foreign correspondents and photojournalists. The massive headcount reduction stunned the media industry, although the paper's heavy financial losses were no secret.
Bezos sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, who bluntly asked, "The company laid off about 30 percent of its staff, and there are a lot of people out there who said, ‘Jeff’s super wealthy, he’s talked about this being a public trust, something that he bought early on, how much you care about that piece of it. Why lay people off? Why fire people? Why don’t you subsidize the business?"
"The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet," Bezos shot back. The Amazon founder is among the world’s richest men with an estimated net worth of around $270 billion, according to Forbes.
"But does it? Some people say it should be a trust," Sorkin said.
"Let me tell you why. It’s a measure of its relevance. If people won’t pay for our product, it’s not a good enough product," Bezos said.
"It would be like poetry without rhyming. It’s too easy," Bezos added. "So, it’s got to be something that people will pay for, because that’s a signal. It’s a signal that we’re providing a relevant service."
Bezos then pointed out that The New York Times, where Sorkin also serves as a financial columnist, makes "a ton of money."
"You guys are doing very well financially, and you’re providing a service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that, too," Bezos said.
"And guess what I told them when we were planning those layoffs. I didn’t pick who was going to get laid off or which departments. I said, ‘Follow the data,’" Bezos continued. "Follow the data, and I said there is one exception to this… don’t follow the data on investigative reporting."
Bezos said the "heart of the Post is investigative reporting," and suggested the unit will continue to thrive.
"Our newsroom today, after the layoffs, is still larger than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers," Bezos said. "The Post is going to continue to be an important institution, in fact, it’s going to be a more important institution because of this financial discipline."
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Bezos pointed to a recent Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, which is considered the most prestigious of awards. The Post won the 2026 edition for in-depth coverage of the Trump administration's efforts to transform the federal government.
"It needs to be relevant to readers, it needs to stand on its own two feet," Bezos said.
Sorkin also asked Bezos point-blank if he wanted to own the paper.
"Do you want to own it? And the reason I ask is you’ve talked about how you are, by default, to some degree a conflicted owner, given you own all of these other businesses," the CNBC host asked.
"When I bought The Post, it was very unprofitable when I brought it. The newsroom was even smaller than it is today. We turned it around in two years, it was profitable for six years. I put all that money back in The Post and grew the newsroom, so we’ve shrunk it back some now. But we haven’t shrunk it back to what it was when I bought it," Bezos responded.
He said the Post didn't adapt, and the news environment has changed a lot over the years.
Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. The paper thrived during the first Trump administration, but it has struggled in recent years with subscriber losses and bruising layoffs.
Bezos took particular heat in 2024 when he yanked the liberal editorial board's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, shortly before her loss to President Donald Trump.
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