Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
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Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
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/ February 4, 2026
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of The Washington Post Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
It turns out that democracy doesn’t die in darkness at all—it succumbs to repeated group muggings at the hands of the moneyed power elite.
Chris Lehmann
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Jeff Bezos attends the Christian Dior Haute Couture Week Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 26, 2026.
(JB Lacroix / GC Images via Getty Images)
For the past week, I’ve been unable to retrieve the copies of The Washington Post that usually get delivered to my home, since the brutal weather in the DC area has turned my front yard into an unfordable moat of frozen snow. This now seems a richly prophetic turn of events, since my hometown newspaper is being eviscerated under the disastrous ownership of centibillionaire monopolist and MAGA flunky Jeff Bezos.
Per a new report from The New York Times—cowritten by former Post media columnist Erik Wemple—the paper is initiating “a widespread round of layoffs.” Other outlets reported that at least a third of Post employees across business and editorial are being let go. In a Zoom call with the paper’s staff—one that neither Bezos nor his handpicked Post publisher Will Lewis deigned to attend—editor in chief Matt Murray announced that the Post’s sports section—a distinguished operation that formerly anchored a great deal of the paper’s market penetration in the mid-Atlantic—will be effectively dismantled, with a handful of staffers left to stoke a walking-dead version of it. Local news coverage—another historic strength of the paper, and one of the few coverage areas that cannot be easily replicated by other national titles—is also being gutted. The Post will also be shuttering its recently revived books section—where I worked as deputy editor in the early aughts. The paper’s daily news podcast will be deep-sixed, and its international desk is due to be hollowed out.
News of this impending bloodletting has been swirling around industry circles for weeks—so much so that foreign correspondents for the Post were reduced last week to publicly begging Bezos to save their jobs, and preserve the Post’s reputation as a serious news organization. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Bezos didn’t bother to reply and kept an arrogant oligarchic silence during the buildup to this gruesome journalistic dismemberment. Bezos also offered no comment when Post reporter Hannah Natanson had her devices seized by the FBI in the investigation of a series of leaks from a …
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Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
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Current Issue
Society
/ February 4, 2026
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of The Washington Post Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
It turns out that democracy doesn’t die in darkness at all—it succumbs to repeated group muggings at the hands of the moneyed power elite.
Chris Lehmann
Share
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X (Twitter)
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Jeff Bezos attends the Christian Dior Haute Couture Week Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 26, 2026.
(JB Lacroix / GC Images via Getty Images)
For the past week, I’ve been unable to retrieve the copies of The Washington Post that usually get delivered to my home, since the brutal weather in the DC area has turned my front yard into an unfordable moat of frozen snow. This now seems a richly prophetic turn of events, since my hometown newspaper is being eviscerated under the disastrous ownership of centibillionaire monopolist and MAGA flunky Jeff Bezos.
Per a new report from The New York Times—cowritten by former Post media columnist Erik Wemple—the paper is initiating “a widespread round of layoffs.” Other outlets reported that at least a third of Post employees across business and editorial are being let go. In a Zoom call with the paper’s staff—one that neither Bezos nor his handpicked Post publisher Will Lewis deigned to attend—editor in chief Matt Murray announced that the Post’s sports section—a distinguished operation that formerly anchored a great deal of the paper’s market penetration in the mid-Atlantic—will be effectively dismantled, with a handful of staffers left to stoke a walking-dead version of it. Local news coverage—another historic strength of the paper, and one of the few coverage areas that cannot be easily replicated by other national titles—is also being gutted. The Post will also be shuttering its recently revived books section—where I worked as deputy editor in the early aughts. The paper’s daily news podcast will be deep-sixed, and its international desk is due to be hollowed out.
News of this impending bloodletting has been swirling around industry circles for weeks—so much so that foreign correspondents for the Post were reduced last week to publicly begging Bezos to save their jobs, and preserve the Post’s reputation as a serious news organization. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Bezos didn’t bother to reply and kept an arrogant oligarchic silence during the buildup to this gruesome journalistic dismemberment. Bezos also offered no comment when Post reporter Hannah Natanson had her devices seized by the FBI in the investigation of a series of leaks from a …
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
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Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
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Current Issue
Society
/ February 4, 2026
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of The Washington Post Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
Jeff Bezos’s Destruction of “The Washington Post” Is a Disgraceful Plutocratic Crime
It turns out that democracy doesn’t die in darkness at all—it succumbs to repeated group muggings at the hands of the moneyed power elite.
Chris Lehmann
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
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Ad Policy
Jeff Bezos attends the Christian Dior Haute Couture Week Spring/Summer 2026 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 26, 2026.
(JB Lacroix / GC Images via Getty Images)
For the past week, I’ve been unable to retrieve the copies of The Washington Post that usually get delivered to my home, since the brutal weather in the DC area has turned my front yard into an unfordable moat of frozen snow. This now seems a richly prophetic turn of events, since my hometown newspaper is being eviscerated under the disastrous ownership of centibillionaire monopolist and MAGA flunky Jeff Bezos.
Per a new report from The New York Times—cowritten by former Post media columnist Erik Wemple—the paper is initiating “a widespread round of layoffs.” Other outlets reported that at least a third of Post employees across business and editorial are being let go. In a Zoom call with the paper’s staff—one that neither Bezos nor his handpicked Post publisher Will Lewis deigned to attend—editor in chief Matt Murray announced that the Post’s sports section—a distinguished operation that formerly anchored a great deal of the paper’s market penetration in the mid-Atlantic—will be effectively dismantled, with a handful of staffers left to stoke a walking-dead version of it. Local news coverage—another historic strength of the paper, and one of the few coverage areas that cannot be easily replicated by other national titles—is also being gutted. The Post will also be shuttering its recently revived books section—where I worked as deputy editor in the early aughts. The paper’s daily news podcast will be deep-sixed, and its international desk is due to be hollowed out.
News of this impending bloodletting has been swirling around industry circles for weeks—so much so that foreign correspondents for the Post were reduced last week to publicly begging Bezos to save their jobs, and preserve the Post’s reputation as a serious news organization. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Bezos didn’t bother to reply and kept an arrogant oligarchic silence during the buildup to this gruesome journalistic dismemberment. Bezos also offered no comment when Post reporter Hannah Natanson had her devices seized by the FBI in the investigation of a series of leaks from a …
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