‘Deep and profound sadness’: Washington Post sports reporter shares emotions after mass layoffs at the paper

I’ve been angry. I’ve been mad, I’ve been frustrated. I’ve been confused at what has been an information vacuum for a lot of this until today. To be honest, at least today, I’m just sad. I’m just really sad for people who, up until the email notice came out, just wanted to do good work. I’m sad for the communities we won’t cover quite as well. I’m sad for the communities we’ll no longer cover it all.

I counted the other day — I wrote 2,011 stories for The Washington Post from February of 2017 to now, almost nine years, and there wasn’t one time where I saw my byline either online or in the paper, and it didn’t feel special.

There’s so many emotions. There’s so many things to feel about our management, our owner, whatever it may be, but I think just a really deep and profound sadness is what I’m feeling right now.

It’s been a few weeks now of rumors, both internally and in the media. It’s just been a really hard waiting period, a lot of dread, a lot of nostalgia for all the great stories and times we had. I don’t think there was much blindsiding today.

Now, as the news trickled to everyone over the last month, there was definitely blindsiding that the Post would take such a drastic action and ax the entire sports section. But as far as the actual, “You’re all laid off now, and we’re going in a new direction.” When that was announced, I think we all knew it was coming.

Yeah. I mean, certainly there’s not going to be sports coverage in the way there was. I do know that there’s a small metro staff still around, and it might not be the same number of people covering the area, but every person who’s there is going to do that to a level that you can’t find almost anywhere else, if anywhere else. So while obviously this does not feel like The Washington Post of 10 hours ago, let alone 10 years ago. I do know that anyone there who is assigned to a local role, who made it through these devastating cuts, is going to just give it 150% to inform the community.

And the sad part about the question you’re asking is that information to communities, to people who open up the paper to know what their favorite sports team did, or what’s happening on their corner, or what restaurants are opening in their area, or why that restaurant closed, or what their local government is doing, that information and that reporting is more essential than ever at a time when the freedom of the press is being challenged every day, at a time when trust in the press is being challenged and stretched every single day.

What The Washington Post is funding less right now and taking away a lot of ways, is at a real inflection point, and that’s what makes me the most sad about what’s happening.

I’m certainly not in the business at the moment of trying to help the people at the top who profit off this newspaper or stand to profit, but for those who have the thought of canceling their subscription right now, I think I can speak for a lot of my laid off colleagues and say while it feels good to know you have our backs, investing in media and investing in storytelling and investing in information is really, really, really critical right now.

And there’s so many people that I work with, or worked with, that are going to keep going, and they’re going to keep telling stories and trying to find information, and they need people to support that work more than ever. So if your knee-jerk reaction is to cancel a subscription over this, I would just say that it just might not be exactly what we need at the moment.