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The Washington Post Guild created a GoFundMe for the more than 300 journalists that were laid off at the mainstay newspaper Wednesday morning — and were “bowled over” by the influx of donations from near and far.
The GoFundMe, organized by the guild and overseen by economics reporter Rachel Siegel, eclipsed $250,000 in donations Wednesday evening.
Siegel wrote that the funds will help the former staffers with “moving costs, visa expenses, childcare, healthcare, meals and more.”
“What has made The Post special for so long is the people at this company. How resourceful we are. How much we care for each other. And that will continue,” the fundraiser read.
Nearly 2,000 people have already pitched in as of Wednesday evening. The current goal is set at $350,000, but Siegel noted the fundraiser will remain open “at least for the next few days.”
“This is an incredibly hard day at The Post, and for the most part, words fail. But we are bowled over by the support that has been shown here. So much of this — the loss of our colleagues, the decisions of this company — feels beyond our control, and far beyond what we thought we were bracing for. The need is also unprecedented, and the scale hard to comprehend,” Siegel wrote in an update Wednesday.
In a scathing post on X, the guild wrote that it “vehemently opposes” the sweeping cuts and called on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post through Nash Holdings, to jump ship so they can find a fresh “steward” who supports the newspaper’s century-old mission if he no longer does.
The Washington Post’s vocation, as stated in various forms since its founding in 1877, is “to hold power to account without fear or favor and provide critical insight into communities across the region, country and world,” the guild wrote.
One-third of the entire newsroom was unceremoniously let go, including the entire sports desk ahead of the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl LX.
Newsroom staffers were ordered to “stay home” Wednesday and attend a Zoom call at 8:30 a.m. ET about “significant actions across the company,” according to a Wednesday email from executive editor Matt Murray and HR bigwig Wayne Connell that was obtained by CNN.
“These moves include substantial newsroom reductions impacting nearly all news departments,” Murray wrote in a letter to staffers obtained by The Post, calling it a “painful” decision.
“We have concluded that the company’s structure is too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product.”
The outlet’s first race and ethnicity reporter, a beat reporter covering Bezos-founded Amazon, and a war reporter currently stationed in Ukraine were among those laid off.
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