The Washington Post eliminated its sports department on Wednesday, a process that will include laying off dozens of journalists and bringing to an end a storied section, which for decades boasted a devoted readership around the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region and beyond.
The sports staff of around 45 people was told to stay home from work Wednesday and alerted to the effective elimination of the department via Zoom, with individual emails to be received about each person’s job status. A handful of sports staffers will be re-assigned within the newsroom. The move is part of a much larger swath of cuts across the newsroom and wider Post organization, impacting hundreds of employees.
“First, we will be closing the Sports department in its current form,” The Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, told the staff, according to Post columnist Barry Svrluga.
Considered one of the great American newspaper sports sections — home of the legendary Shirley Povich; showcase for Hall of Famers like Thomas Boswell; incubator of award-winning talent like Christine Brennan, Sally Jenkins and David Aldridge; and the original source of the winning alchemy that Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon later took to ESPN — the department was part of widespread staffing reduction and coverage elimination at the Post, impacting desks like foreign news to local metro coverage.
The Post sent four staffers to Italy to cover the Winter Olympics, which begin this week, after initially announcing that no reporters would be covering the Games, a stark departure from previous investments the organization had made to cover the event. Three Post reporters are currently in the Bay Area to cover the Super Bowl.
Under CEO Will Lewis, the Post has struggled to identify and execute a clear pathway to a sustainable business model through a challenging era in the media industry, in an environment where the competition for reader attention and subscription commitments and marketer spending has become fierce. The cuts to the sports section and other coverage areas were a function of deep-seated strategic and financial failures within the Post at large, rather than of problems with the sports coverage, which as recently as last year captured the highest level of industry awards for its excellence.
Midway through 2025, the Post offered buyouts to the newsroom staff, which resulted in an exodus of talent. With Wednesday’s announcement, there would be no additional buyout offers — only the sudden elimination of a longtime institution for Washington, D.C., sports fans.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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