The Washington Post has closed its books section amid a mass layoff that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs, the New York Times reports.
The D.C. newspaper, which is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is slashing about 30% of its staff and shuttering its books and sports sections, as well as its Post Reports podcast.
The cuts come less than four years after the newspaper announced that it was reviving its Book World section with John Williams as its editor. Publishers Lunch reports that at least nine journalists work at the books section, including celebrated critics Ron Charles and Becca Rothfeld, who’ve both received the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.
Post executive editor Matt Murray informed employees of the cuts in a call Wednesday morning, saying, “If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming [a] more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape, and after some years when, candidly, the Post has had struggles.”
Charles addressed the closing of the books section in his Substack newsletter, writing, “My job, along with many others, was eliminated in the paper’s latest effort to reinvent itself. How a major national newspaper will carry on without someone on staff to summarize the plots of midlist literary novels is beyond me. But I’ll leave that challenge to the august managers who must now carry The Post forward.”
Williams responded to the news on the social platform Bluesky, writing, “I’ll say more before too long, but for now: Thanks to anyone who has ever read and supported the Post’s books coverage.”
Also on Bluesky, Alex Shephard, a senior editor at the New Republic, reacted to the news, writing, “there isn’t a better Books desk in the country than the one at the Washington Post. I’m not really sure there’s anything else to say.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
