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In early February, the Washington Post made the shocking decision to lay off nearly half its newsroom (more than the third that the Post originally acknowledged), including reporters covering race, ethnicity, and communities of color. Half of the Post’s unionized members who identify as Hispanic or Latino were let go, according to the Washington Post Newspaper Guild, along with 45 percent of Black members and 43 percent of Asian members. By comparison, just 37 percent of white guild members lost their jobs. “When these layoffs took place, and I saw the gravity, and then I saw some of the names—including myself—diversity was the first thing on my mind, like ‘God, this is going to be really bad,’ because the numbers were already trending in the wrong direction,” Michael Brice-Saddler, an outgoing metro reporter, who is Black, told me. 

The Post’s decision to cut so many staffers of color, many of whom cover diverse communities, is in line with recent media layoffs that have hit journalists of color particularly hard. Last fall, staffers of color were let go, and teams covering race and ethnicity were disbanded, at outlets including CBS, NBC, and Teen Vogue, part of a larger cultural and political shift away from diversity goals and public commitments to equity in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of police in 2020. “A certain kind of prevailing dispensation came into power last year and just wanted to take a hammer to things in Washington,” another laid-off Post journalist, who asked not to be named because they are still considered an employee until April, said. “And we are one of those things that they have taken a hammer to in a certain way.” 

Some outgoing Post reporters who covered communities of color told me that the newsroom gave up on championing diverse voices following Donald Trump’s second presidential election win. Since then, these reporters noticed a considerable drop in interest and funding for their coverage of diverse communities and diminishing support for reporters of color within the newsroom. According to a survey of more than thirty Black journalists conducted last year and a letter to newsroom leadership that were reviewed by CJR and are being reported for the first time, many Black journalists at the Post didn’t feel that the newsroom was committed to retaining Black employees long-term or to hiring Black leaders. 

When the Post hired Emmanuel Felton, in June of 2021, as a race and ethnicity reporter, the newsroom had just come off a surge of award-winning coverage of Floyd’s murder and subsequent racial-justice protests across the country. “I was very skeptical about going to the Post, but when I saw what went into that George Floyd coverage, and how many resources they put behind that, it seemed like this was it,” Felton, who previously worked at BuzzFeed, said. His final story for the Post before this month’s layoffs were announced was a Black history quiz. “We had gone from trying to do aggressive work about race and racism to sort of sliding into covering it as a cultural issue, which feels a little crazy,” he said. “There have been few moments when race was more central to the national conversation, to national politics.” 

Over the past year, a newsroom reorganization separated the race and ethnicity desk from the politics team, Felton said, and resources and funding for his work began to ebb. “In a normal year, I would be traveling around the country almost constantly, writing about different communities,” he said. “Last year, I took two reporting trips.”

(Olivia Petersen, the Washington Post’s head of communications; Matt Murray, the executive editor; Will Lewis, the former publisher; Wayne Connell, the head of human relations; Eleanor Breen, the chief of staff; and Adam O’Neal, the opinion editor, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

Amber Ferguson, a rapid-response culture reporter who had been at the Post for nine years before being laid off this month, said that she noticed a shift in how her pitches were received. During a meeting in January 2025 about potential stories on the incoming Trump administration’s tariff policies, she recalled, she pitched a story about discounts on hair extensions, which were expected to become more costly once tariffs were implemented. She recalled that the editor running the meeting responded by saying, “No, let’s do something that a lot of people use.” (According to Ferguson’s memory, the editor suggested a story about Korean skin care instead.) “I was just so shocked by that, because I didn’t picture it as a Black story,” Ferguson told me. “A lot of people wear hair extensions and wigs and stuff.” (A few months later, the Baltimore Banner published a story on the impact of tariffs on the Black hair care industry.) 

A turning point came in September, when the Post let go of Karen Attiah, who wrote at the time of her departure that she was the paper’s only full-time Black opinion columnist. The New York Times reported that “the newspaper fired Ms. Attiah for posts on the social media app Bluesky that violated the company’s social media policies, saying they ‘harm the integrity’ of the organization.” Later that month, a few Black Post journalists sent a survey to more than four dozen Black newsroom employees, about three-quarters of whom responded. The survey was not associated with the guild, Ferguson said.

The survey, aimed at gauging the experience of Black newsroom staffers in the wake of Attiah’s firing and the departures of other senior Black leaders, asked staffers to respond on a scale of one to five, with one being “strongly disagree” and five being “strongly agree,” to the prompt “I believe Newsroom and Opinions leadership values diversity and is committed to including Black employees in senior and decision-making roles.” The average response was 1.65. To the prompt “I am confident the organization is committed to retaining and supporting Black employees long term,” the average response was 1.61. No one gave a number higher than three in response to either prompt. 

Employees also wrote that they had lost career mentorship and support systems in the newsroom, that their perspectives weren’t valued, and that stories “tied to race, culture or identity are often dismissed before they even get a chance.” According to an email that was reviewed by CJR, the survey results were shared with Lewis and Connell on December 1, 2025. “The departures and buyouts of senior Black staff have left us without Black leaders in key roles, raising difficult questions about whether there are paths to advancement for Black talent and opportunities to shape coverage,” according to an October letter to Murray, Lewis, Breen, and O’Neal signed by forty-five Black Post journalists. “These notable absences have created a perception that Black perspectives are being minimized at a time when they are most needed, both for our journalism and for the communities we serve.” 

The journalists requested a chance to speak with leadership about their concerns. On December 2, 2025, Ferguson and three Black colleagues met with Murray, Lewis, and Connell. Ferguson said that she and her colleagues laid out three asks: that the Post hire a managing editor of diversity and inclusion; that there be formal evaluations of managers on their efforts to recruit and retain employees of color on all levels; and that managers be trained in how better to assist journalists of color when they face harassment in response to their reporting. “Will said, ‘How did it get this bad?’” Ferguson recalled. “And we were like, ‘What do you mean?’ That was just such a funny thing to say. I mean, you’re the cause of the majority of this. You didn’t appoint any people of color under your direct leadership.” 

Ferguson said Lewis told her and the other staffers that he found the survey revealing and was committed to addressing their concerns. When a staffer followed up to ask if he’d given thought to their discussion, Lewis wrote, in an email reviewed by CJR: “I have asked Wayne to consider your suggestions and thoughts as we consider what a broader company-wide strategy needs to be to address diversity. Yours and your colleagues feedback in that regard has been very useful.” He recommended “speaking with Matt directly” for suggestions specific to the newsroom. According to Ferguson and another Post journalist familiar with the meeting who asked not to be named because they still work at the paper, no action was taken. 

María Luisa Paúl, a union member and national breaking news reporter who often covered immigration and helped colleagues with Spanish translations and interviews, was also laid off. “We were one of our most diverse teams,” Paul said, noting that national breaking news had two Latina journalists, two Asian journalists, two South Asian journalists, and a Jewish reporter. “Our team was truly like a microcosm of the country, and my editor particularly was very passionate about making sure we cover different communities,” Paúl said. Most of her team was laid off. 

Brice-Saddler, one of eighteen metro reporters the Post laid off, said that even before the cuts, the metro desk wasn’t representative of the community it had been covering, which has a significant Black population. Now it will be even less so. “Anybody at the paper who has integrity would tell you that we have some blind spots, not just racially, but economically,” Brice-Saddler said. “Where our reporters are located is not necessarily reflective of the entire city. So no news organization is going to be perfect, but I think every time we have cuts like this, it’s going to be a step back in what they—being leadership—say they’re setting out to accomplish in creating a diverse newsroom.”

Other notable stories… 

• On Friday, Don Lemon pleaded not guilty to federal charges stemming from his presence at a church protest in Saint Paul last month. Federal officers arrested Lemon, a former CNN anchor who hosts The Don Lemon Show on YouTube, and independent journalist Georgia Fort on charges that they had broken the law while covering an anti-immigration protest at a church service. “You cannot be neutral about the dismantling of our democracy and still expect to be protected by it,” Fort told CJR days before her arrest.

• The Guardian’s Amy Hawkins reported that media outlets in Hong Kong have largely stayed silent or celebrated media tycoon Jimmy Lai’s twenty-year jail sentence, which was announced last week. As Liam Scott wrote for CJR, Lai was found guilty last year of sedition and “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” relating to Apple Daily, his now-shuttered newspaper, under a national security law imposed by China.

• The Pew Research Center reported that a majority of Americans (57 percent) have low confidence that journalists will act in the best interests of the public. The analysis from the Pew-Knight initiative indicated a wide variation in responses based on people’s political affiliations: “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans and GOP leaners (25%) to say they have confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public,” the report says. 

• For Nieman Lab, Andrew Deck dived into the Times’ use of a custom AI tool to track the “manosphere.” The Times has been tracking growing discontent across the GOP base with the aid of an AI-generated review known as the “manosphere report” that uses large language models to transcribe and summarize dozens of podcast episodes. “Broadly speaking, the ‘manosphere’ includes online communities that promote narrow and patriarchal definitions of masculinity, as well as misogynistic and anti-feminist views,” Deck writes. Last year, the manosphere report was able to detect backlash from right-wing commentators over the administration’s July announcement that it would not publish additional files relating to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.  

• The Baltimore Banner is stepping up to the plate after the Washington Post benched its sports section. The publication announced last week that it will expand its sports coverage to include Washington, DC, teams, and that sports journalists will be added to the Banner’s existing staff to cover the Nationals and the Commanders. 

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