The Washington Post on Wednesday announced layoffs for a third of its newsroom — including its entire sports desk – ignoring reporters’ impassioned pleas to billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

More than 300 journalists across the newsroom were impacted, with the local and international desks targeted in addition to the sports section, according to reports.

Just a handful of the sports team’s 45 staffers survived the culling and were set to be reassigned around the organization, according to the New York Times.

Newsroom staffers were told to “stay home today” 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.”

A spokesperson for the Washington Post confirmed “a significant restructuring across the company.”

After the call, a grim litany of posts by fired staffers began to fill social media feeds.

“I’m among the hundreds of people laid off by The Post,” Emmanuel Felton, the WaPo’s first race and ethnicity reporter, wrote on X.

“This comes six months after hearing in a national meeting that race coverage drives subscriptions,” he added. “This wasn’t a financial decision, it was an ideological one.”

Also axed was Caroline O’Donovan, the beat reporter covering Bezos-founded Amazon.

Even a war correspondent wasn’t spared.

“I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone,” Ukraine reporter Lizzie Johnson wrote on X. “I have no words. I’m devastated.”

The paper’s Jerusalem and Ukraine bureaus were shut down, several WaPo staffers wrote on X.

National culture and entertainment writer Jada Yuan, book editor Jacob Brogan, tech columnist Geoff Fowler and Cairo bureau chief Claire Parker also said they were laid off.

The metro desk — which once produced the legendary Watergate reporting that brought down former President Richard Nixon — was devastated. Just 15 reporters and three editors had their jobs at the end of the day, down from 33 reporters and 11 editors, a source told The Post.

The cuts were so severe that at least one department head – Peter Finn, the paper’s international editor – asked to be laid off rather than be included in the planning, according to the Times.

Mass layoffs had been expected for weeks after WaPo sent out a shocking internal memo announcing it was scrapping its Winter Olympics coverage, sparking fears it could eliminate its sports desk entirely.

It ultimately reversed this decision, opting to send four reporters to Italy and three more to the Bay Area to cover the Super Bowl – but staffers continued to panic over reports the paper’s publisher, Will Lewis, has spoken privately about investing in politics and cutting back on sports and foreign affairs.

“If the plan, to the extent there is one, is to reorient around politics we wanted to emphasize how much we rely on collaboration with foreign, sports, local – the entire paper, really. And if other sections are diminished, we all are,” White House bureau chief Matt Viser and seven other White House reporters wrote in a letter to Bezos obtained by CNN. 

In the letter to Bezos – which began with a chummy “Dear Jeff” – the journos attempted to appeal to the billionaire Amazon founder with numbers, claiming that many of their stories that drew new subscribers required collaboration with the international and metro desks.

International correspondents and more than two dozen Washington, DC-area beat reporters have also sent letters to Bezos urging him to hold off on firing staff, according to CNN.

Many journos at the paper have been applying for opportunities elsewhere as they looked to jump ship, according to the Status newsletter.

Meanwhile, staffers are reportedly at a breaking point after years of layoffs and a growing distrust of Bezos and Lewis after the paper killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 and added more conservative voices to its Opinion section, along with airing reorganization plans that came across as half-baked.

Bezos’ new vision for the WaPo’s opinion section emphasized free markets and personal liberties – ultimately leading opinion editor David Shipley and several columnists to exit the company.

The canceled endorsement of Harris fueled outrage among loyal readers, who ended their subscriptions en masse and hurt the paper’s bottom line.

The broadsheet offered buyouts to newsroom staffers about halfway through 2025, but Wednesday’s layoff announcement signaled the end of such offers and a more intense cost-cutting measure.

Additional reporting by Charles Gasparino