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The Washington Post imposed extra layoffs on Tuesday only a week after proprietor Jeff Bezos visited its Washington D.C. workplace. Among the ritual sacrifices will be Launcher, the newspaper’s burgeoning gaming part, which routinely broke important news stories, landed big interviews, and requested the tough questions.
Launcher had solely just turned three years old last fall and was one of many few makes an attempt by a mainstream media outlet to sort out the unwieldy world of video video games in a method that wasn’t condescending or misinformed. Kotaku understands that a few of its staff can be reassigned to different elements of The Washington Post whereas the others can be laid off. Due to their union contracts, these affected will nonetheless stay employed till March 31.
Fifty positions are reportedly being eradicated total, together with 30 vacancies that may go unfilled and 20 employees who will not have jobs. “We are additionally eliminating at present crammed positions we concluded usually are not important to serving our aggressive wants,” government editor Sally Buzbee wrote in a memo to employees on the identical time that new hires inside the firm were still being announced.
Bezos, who’s price over $100 billion, purchased The Washington Post again in 2013 for simply $250 million. His yacht is rumored to cost twice as much. Despite a increase in paid subscribers in the course of the chaos-filled Trump years, managers on the paper have reportedly been in disagreement over the right way to increase and develop within the years forward. This prompted an in-person go to from Bezos final week the place he maintained he was absolutely dedicated to the paper and just there to listen.
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“We have received no clear explanation for why these layoffs had to happen,” The Washington Post Guild tweeted at this time. “As far as we will inform, they don’t seem to be financially obligatory or rooted in any coherent marketing strategy from our writer, who has stated that he expects the corporate to be bigger a yr from now.”
The closure of Launcher comes whereas firms throughout the remainder of media shed jobs because the Federal Reserve makes an attempt to fabricate a recession to appease Wall Street buyers. Games media has been hit especially hard, with current layoffs at IGN, Game Informer, Fanbyte, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and extra. The online game business, in the meantime, is projected by some analysts to grow to $300 billion earlier than the top of the last decade.
The Washington Post didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Update 1/24/23 5:01 p.m. ET: Added remark from The Washington Post Guild and details about Launcher staffers’ final day.
