Following weeks of rumors and speculation, the Washington Post announced mass layoffs on Wednesday, including the shuttering of its sports department in its current iteration.
Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray announced the news in a video call with employees, who were told to stay home amid the anticipated changes.
“First, we will be closing the sports department in its current form,” Washington Post sports columnist Barry Svrluga relayed from the call.
According to Semafor’s Max Tani, the paper said that it plans to retain several reporters to join its features department and cover sports as a “cultural and societal phenomenon.” A few employees will also remain on its printed sports section.
The decision comes weeks after the Jeff Bezos-owned publication informed staff it was scrapping its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics two weeks before the opening ceremony, despite having already spent more than $80,000 on housing. The paper ultimately reversed that decision following harsh criticism. However, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that rumors inside the newsroom suggested the sports desk itself could be on the chopping block. By the time news broke that WaPo wouldn’t be sending beat reporters to cover Washington Nationals spring training and would no longer send reporters to cover D.C.-based pro team road games, the writing was clearly on the wall.
The Washington Post sports desk was, for much of the last 100 years, the apex of the business. Once the sportswriting home of Shirley Povich, George Solomon, Thomas Boswell, Jane Leavy, Sally Jenkins, John Feinstein, Tony Kornheiser, and Michael Wilbon, it had remained one of the pinnacles of the American sportswriter’s dream until recently, when prominent names accepted buyouts, editorial standards dipped, and the quality of local coverage began to suffer.
“What you’re losing is another place where people can get accountability, where people can get reporting that is ostensibly uncompromised by the incentives that are otherwise crawling over sports media. And that’s the same of it,” said Pablo Torre last month in response to the WaPo reports. “What I mourn is the loss of another newsroom that had infrastructure and collective experience and expertise that no longer is being funded. The question of like, what can we mourn here as a matter of how f—– it is, is that there are these administrations now with the CEOs included for whom they are, they’re not standing up for the thing that their institution that they’re trying to save now was most distinguished by, which is to say the quality and the necessity of the journalists.”
This isn’t the first American newspaper to shutter its sports desk or downgrade its coverage. The New York Times did it, albeit with The Athletic as an in-house replacement. But there’s something about it being the Washington Post that makes it feel especially depressing, especially at this moment. There’s a larger conversation about how the newspaper is letting Americans down exactly when we need it most, but axing one of the most venerable sports sections in newspaper history feels like an especially cruel insult to injury.
Sports journalists were already excoriating the Post and owner Jeff Bezos before the ax fell. Expect to see many more reactions like that in the coming days, especially from those who made their bones at that sports desk.