• Jeff Bezos' newest op-ed shift at The Washington Post has reportedly cost it 75,000 subscribers in a couple of days.
• That's on top of even bigger subscriber losses last fall, when he ordered the paper to stop doing presidential endorsements.
• Bezos' moves seem like they are helping him win favor with Donald Trump. But if they're going to cost his paper money — why own it at all?

Let's stipulate that Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. So he can do anything he wants with it.

Like ordering the paper's editors not to make a presidential endorsement. Or announcing that from now on the paper's op-ed pages would only publish stuff that supports "personal liberties and free markets," as he announced this week.

That said, those decisions seem to be costing Bezos money, at the very least.

When the billionaire announced his non-endorsement plans last fall, days before the election, hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled their subscriptions in less than two weeks, NPR's David Folkenflik previously reported.

Now Folkenflik reports that 75,000 subscribers have left the paper following Bezos' op-ed shift, announced on Wednesday. Though a Post executive told Folkenflik the paper signed up another 400,000 subscribers in between Bezos' announcements, numbers Folkenflik has seen indicate the Post has "a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers," he reported. A Post rep declined to comment about subscription numbers.

The important context here is that prior to Bezos' op-ed moves, he had installed new leadership at the Post, tasked with finding new readers and new ways to make money. Now, he appears to be making both things harder.

It's always possible that Bezos' moves will generate more readership from people who want to read an op-ed page promoting a libertarian/conservative point of view. Though it's hard to believe that market is "underserved," as he argued in his memo announcing the changes: Among traditional media, both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal service that market today.

And it's very easy to find that point of view on the wider internet (and particularly on Twitter, now that Elon Musk bought it, changed its name to X, and began amplifying right-learning accounts).

It's also possible that after this newest controversy, the Post will eventually settle into another version of the Journal, which has a famously right-wing op-ed section and does respected, down-the-middle news reporting in the rest of its pages.

And it's also worth noting that on Friday, two days after Bezos kicked off the latest unrest among his readers and his staff, WaPo op-ed writer Dana Milbank published a story arguing that "the single greatest threat to "personal liberties and free markets" in the United States today [is] President Donald Trump." So we really don't know how all of this will shake out.

That said … from outside the paper, Bezos' moves look like they're calculated to please a single reader. President Donald Trump.

Ask Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News personality who now hosts a successful podcast/YouTube show: "He's doing what Joe [Scarborough] and Mika [Brzezinski] did. He's bending the knee," she said at an event hosted by Semafor this week, referring to the MSNBC hosts' visit to Trump days after last fall's election.

Will that work? Maybe, says Kelly, who appeared onstage at a Trump rally during the last campaign.

"You win respect with Trump when you go to him and you tell him 'I like you,' which is clearly what Bezos did. The reporting is very clear," she said. "I think Trump and he will be fine. But that doesn't make any difference at all to somebody like me, who's actually looking for sincerity."

So if you follow that critique, Bezos is in a bit of a pickle: He can steer his paper in a way that could make the president of the United States happy — but will lose readers on the left, and won't gain them on the right.

Maybe all of that is OK for the third-richest man in the world, who could buy another 100 Washington Posts and still have more money than Larry Ellison, who's currently one slot behind him on Forbes's tally of the world's billionaires.

But then why own the Post at all? Then Bezos wouldn't have to worry about what Donald Trump, or Megyn Kelly, or anyone else — including the paper's readers — think about it.

• Trump told an interviewer that he dined with Jeff Bezos on Wednesday night.
• That's the same day Bezos announced a major shake-up at the Washington Post's opinion section.
• Trump said little about the dinner, but marveled that so many billionaires are cozying up to him.

President Donald Trump says he had dinner with Jeff Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, on Wednesday night.

That's the same day that Bezos announced a major shake-up of the Post's opinion section, including a new focus on defending "personal liberties and free markets."

Trump told The Spectator in an interview conducted on Thursday that he "had dinner with Jeff Bezos last night."

The president offered few details of the encounter, and it's unclear who else was at the dinner, or what was discussed. A White House spokesman declined to comment further, while representatives for Bezos did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump demurred when asked whether he trusts Bezos: "Who do I trust? I mean, who do you trust? Do you trust anybody? These are very smart guys."

But he also marveled at how Bezos and other billionaires, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have cozied up to him since his 2024 election victory.

"We have dinners together, usually started by them. I'm so busy with all of this. Between China, Russia, Ukraine, I've got more things happening," Trump told the outlet. "I said, 'would you have been here if I lost,' you know? 'Would you have been here if I lost it?' They never answer that question. Actually, they just sort of shy away from it."

Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other major tech billionaires and CEOs attended the inauguration in January, with prime seating in front of Trump's Cabinet. It was a stark reversal from Trump's first term in office, when he had a more antagonistic relationship with many of those tech leaders.

In October, Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

• Jeff Bezos unveiled sweeping changes to The Washington Post's opinion pages.
• Coverage will now center around two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.
• The search for a new opinions editor has begun after David Shipley stepped away, Bezos said.

Jeff Bezos unveiled sweeping changes to The Washington Post's opinion page in a note to staff that he also shared on X.

"We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets," Bezos wrote. "We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."

Bezos, who owns the Post, said there's no longer a need for "a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views" because of the internet.

"I am of America and for America, and proud to be so," he wrote. "And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else."

As part of the overhaul, Bezos said that opinions editor David Shipley is stepping away from the paper, and that the search is on for a replacement.

Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of the Post, echoed Bezos' view in his own staff memo.

"This is not about siding with any political party," Lewis wrote in a memo shared with Business Insider. "This is about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper."

While newspaper owners generally set the direction of opinion pages, the shift prompted some fierce criticism.

Martin Baron, who was executive editor of the Post from 2013 to 2021, emailed BI that he was "sad and disgusted" by Bezos' action, calling it counter to his history of standing up for editorial independence at the Post while Baron was there.

"Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section," Baron wrote. "It was only weeks ago that The Post described itself as providing coverage for 'all of America.' Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does."

Chief economics reporter Jeff Stein wrote on X that the move was a "massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post's opinion section."

"Makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there," he wrote.

A current Post staffer on the news side told BI that there was "a lot of tension in the newsroom that we're next."

"Top editors are reminding us that so far there hasn't been any interference in the newsroom," this person said. They asked for anonymity in discussing internal matters; their identity is known to BI.

The staffer also said Bezos's heavy-handed messaging felt like a first, likening it to "a proclamation coming down from high."

This new shake-up comes after a series of controversies at the Post.

In October, the Post made waves when it opted not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election — a decision that the Post reported came from Bezos himself.

Following a year of internal turmoil, hundreds of Post staffers sent Bezos a letter in January asking him to intervene after integrity and transparency issues — far beyond the endorsement controversy, the letter said — had precipitated staff departures.

The Los Angeles Times has also been roiled by controversy after its billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, became more involved in the paper's opinion section. Before the presidential election, he stopped the paper from endorsing then-VP Kamala Harris. He also said the paper had moved too far to the left and called for a more balanced approach to covering President Donald Trump.

In his second term, Trump has put greater pressure on the mainstream US news media. His administration has opened investigations into news organizations and thwarted some outlets' access to covering events.

Here's the note that Bezos shared with staff in full:

I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.

I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't "hell yes," then it had to be "no." After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.

I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void.

Jeff

• The Washington Post cut an ad urging Trump to fire Elon Musk, watchdog group Common Cause said.
• Common Cause said it had a $115,000 deal to run ads in the Post's Tuesday print editions.
• The Post initially approved the nature of the ad, and didn't say why it was rejected, the org said.

The Washington Post scrapped an ad calling for President Donald Trump to "fire Elon Musk" that was slated to run in some of its Tuesday print editions, according to one of the organizations that ordered the ad.

Advocacy group Common Cause had agreed to pay $115,000 to the Post to run an ad criticizing billionaire Elon Musk wrapped around the newspapers and a similar ad inside the paper, the organization told Business Insider.

The ads are part of a bigger campaign by Common Cause called "Fire Elon Musk," urging people to sign a petition calling for Musk's removal as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency.

The ad, which Common Cause later posted on its website, features Elon Musk laughing behind an image of the White House, and says in large text, "Who's running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?"

Smaller text below the image states that the Tesla CEO "has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk" and notes that "the Constitution only allows for one president at a time."

The group said the Post initially approved the nature of the ad but that the Post informed Common Cause on Friday of its decision to drop the wrap ad from publication without explanation.

The Post said it would allow Common Cause to run its similar ad inside the paper, per the organization, but Common Cause declined.

"It's deeply concerning that our ad was censored and rejected without a valid reason," said Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause's president and CEO, and Margaret Huang, Southern Poverty Law Center's president and CEO, in a joint statement. Common Cause planned to pay for the ads in collaboration with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund.

"We believe this is limiting our freedom of expression at a critical time in our nation's history. This seems to show the Washington Post is feeling pressure to cover the news a certain way," Kase Solomón and Huang said.

The Post declined to comment on its internal decisions about advertising campaigns. Its advertising guidelines state that the Post "accepts all types of advertising and does not decline advertising unless there is a compelling reason to do so," but "nonetheless reserves the right to position, revise, or refuse to publish any advertisement."

The ads are part of a bigger campaign by Common Cause called "Fire Elon Musk," urging people to sign a petition calling for Musk's removal as the head of DOGE. The group says it's collected 60,000 signatures and organized thousands of calls to congressional representatives.

Musk, the world's richest person, runs several companies including X, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Tesla. He's now leading DOGE, the new commission that aims to slash federal spending and cut regulations.

The Post's decision to pull the ad comes just a month after Elon Musk nodded at a friendship with the outlet's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, in a series of X posts. Musk and Bezos own competing companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively, and have exchanged playful jabs for years.

In January posts, Musk and Bezos congratulated each other on their companies' rocket launches, and Musk posted clips from the 2008 comedy "Step Brothers," one of which showed its characters asking, "Did we just become best friends?"

Here are the ads that Common Cause said it planned to run in the Washington Post:

• More than 400 Washington Post staffers are urging Jeff Bezos to meet with the paper's leaders.
• The letter says integrity and transparency issues have caused staff departures.
• The Post has faced subscriber losses and leadership scrutiny under CEO Will Lewis.

More than 400 Washington Post staffers sent a letter to the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos, asking him to intervene after a year of crises.

The letter asked Bezos, who has owned the paper since 2013, to come to the Post and meet with its leaders.

"We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent," the letter says. "This goes far beyond the issue of the presidential endorsement, which we recognize as the owner's prerogative. This is about retaining our competitive edge, restoring trust that has been lost, and reestablishing a relationship with leadership based on open communication."

One newsroom insider called it notable for its representation of nonunion as well as union signatories.

"It ratchets up the pressure," said this person, who, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely about internal matters. Their identity is known to Business Insider.

Since Bezos bought the paper, the Amazon executive chairman has had regular meetings with the business side but largely stayed out of the news coverage.

"From the very beginning, he told us he wouldn't be involved in any way in the newsroom, or be a hands-on owner," the Post insider said. "Our Amazon coverage has been aggressive, and he's never pushed back. I think the plea now is to get him involved now to establish some leadership in the newsroom."

The Post has been battered by a string of recent crises under Will Lewis, its publisher and CEO. NPR reported that the outlet lost a significant number of subscribers after announcing — just days before the US presidential election in November — that it wouldn't endorse a candidate. That decision broke with 40 years of tradition and came after a Kamala Harris endorsement had been planned.

Bezos later explained the decision in an opinion column, saying many people believe the media is biased and presidential endorsements don't help.

A second Post insider, who is familiar with the subscription numbers, said the paper had won back at least 20% of the subscriptions it lost after the endorsement situation. They said nearly three-fourths of those people who canceled are still using the site while their subscriptions remain active.

Since the endorsement controversy, a number of high-profile newsroom figures have defected.

They include a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, who quit after the paper declined to publish her cartoon that portrayed Bezos and other media and tech CEOs sucking up to a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. David Shipley, the Post's opinion editor, said at the time that he rejected the cartoon because the paper had already published a column on the same topic and that another was scheduled for publication.

A third Post insider described a nihilistic feeling at the company amid the talent exodus. They said they felt it would be hard for the paper to move forward under Bezos' ownership in a second Trump administration, given credibility issues with some left-leaning readers.

"A lot of really good institutions are going to have a really hard time in the Trump administration, from higher education to journalism," this person said. "And I think the Post, in part because of our own doing, is one of the first to have its walls shook really, really hard."

Lewis earlier faced scrutiny when he replaced the top editor, Sally Buzbee, last year, and then his choice of replacement backed out. He also faced questions over his actions during the aftermath of a UK phone-hacking scandal.

Not all Post staffers are in agreement with the petition. Another staffer, the sports columnist Sally Jenkins, said the Post's biggest problem is the underlying business challenges facing it and other legacy media.

"I think the Post is in the middle of trying to find solutions, and it takes a lot of time," she said. "Would I love it if Jeff Bezos came to the newsroom? Sure. I just think things are much more complicated than, 'Oh, things will be fine if Jeff Bezos comes in and talks to some editors.'"

Like many other news outlets, the paper has struggled on the revenue side. Last week, it began laying off 4% of staff on the business side, Reuters reported.

Here's the full text of the letter:

To Jeff Bezos:

You recently wrote that ensuring the long-term success and editorial independence of this newspaper is essential. We agree, and we believe you take as much pride in The Washington Post as we do.

We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent. This goes far beyond the issue of the presidential endorsement, which we recognize as the owner's prerogative. This is about retaining our competitive edge, restoring trust that has been lost, and reestablishing a relationship with leadership based on open communication.

We urge you to come to our office and meet with Post leaders, as you have in the past, about what has been happening at The Post. We understand the need for change, and we are eager to deliver the news in innovative ways. But we need a clear vision we can believe in.

We are committed to pursuing independent journalism that holds power to account and to reporting the news without fear or favor. That will never change. Nothing will shake our determination to follow the reporting wherever it leads.

As you wrote when you first became The Post's owner in 2013, "The values of The Post do not need changing." We urge you to stand with us in reaffirming those values.

Signed,

Staffers of The Washington Post

• Companies such as Meta, Microsoft, BlackRock, and Chevron are conducting layoffs.
• Artificial intelligence is reshaping some workforces.
• See the list of companies letting workers go in 2025.

Layoffs and other workforce reductions are continuing in 2025, following two years of significant job cuts across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, retail, and energy.

While the reasons for slimming staff vary, the cost-cutting measures are coming amid a backdrop of technological change. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, some 41% of companies worldwide said they expected to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Companies such as CNN, Dropbox, and IBM have previously announced job cuts related to AI. Tech jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are meanwhile expected to double by 2030, according to the WEF.

Here are the companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2025 so far.

Adidas plans to cut up to 500 jobs in Germany.

Adidas said in January that it would reduce the size of its workforce at its headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, impacting up to 500 jobs, CNBC reported.

If fully executed, it amounts to a reduction of nearly 9% at the company headquarters, which employs about 5,800 employees, according to the Adidas website.

The news came shortly after the company announced it had outperformed its profit expectations at the end of 2024, touting "better-than-expected" results in the fourth quarter.

"Strong growth across all regions and divisions proves the good job our teams are doing across regions and functions," CEO Bjørn Gulden said in a press release. "So although we are not yet where we want to be long term, I am very happy with this development which was much better than we had expected."

In a statement to BI, an Adidas spokesperson said the company had grown "too complex because of our current operating model."

"To set adidas up for long-term success," the spokesperson said, "we are now starting to look at how we align our operating model with the reality of how we work. This may have an impact on the organizational structure and number of roles based at our HQ in Herzogenaurach."

The company said it is not a cost-cutting measure and that it could not confirm concrete numbers.

Ally is cutting less than 5% of workers.

The digital-financial-services company Ally is laying off roughly 500 of its 11,000 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

"As we continue to right-size our company, we made the difficult decision to selectively reduce our workforce in some areas, while continuing to hire in our other areas of our business," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company was offering severance, out-placement support, and the opportunity to apply for openings at Ally.

Ally made a similar level of cuts in October 2023, the Charlotte Observer reported.

BlackRock is cutting 1% of its workforce.

BlackRock told employees it was planning to cut about 200 people of its 21,000-strong workforce, Bloomberg reported in January.

The reductions were more than offset by some 3,750 workers who were added last year and another 2,000 expected to be added in 2025.

BlackRock's president, Rob Kapito, and its chief operating officer, Rob Goldstein, said the cuts would help realign the firm's resources with its strategy, Bloomberg reported.

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos's rocket company, Blue Origin, is laying off about 10% of its workforce, a move that could affect more than 1,000 employees.

In a memo sent to staff in February and obtained by Business Insider, David Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin, said the company's priority going forward was "to scale our manufacturing output and launch cadence with speed, decisiveness and efficiency for our customers."

Limp specifically identified roles in engineering, research and development, and management as targets.

"We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed," Limp wrote. "It also became clear that the makeup of our organization must change to ensure our roles are best aligned with executing these priorities."

The news comes after last month's debut launch of the company's partially reusable rocket — New Glenn.

Boeing cut 400 roles from its moon rocket program

Boeing announced on February 8 it plans to cut 400 roles from its moon rocket program amid delays and rising costs related to NASA's Artemis moon exploration missions.

Artemis 2, a crewed flight to orbit the moon on Boeing's space launch system, has been re-scheduled from late 2024 to September 2025. Artemis 3, intended to be the first astronaut moon landing in the program, was delayed from late 2025 and is now planned for September 2026.

"To align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations, we informed our Space Launch Systems team of the potential for approximately 400 fewer positions by April 2025," a Boeing spokesperson told Business Insider. "We are working with our customer and seeking opportunities to redeploy employees across our company to minimize job losses and retain our talented teammates."

The company will issue 60-day notices of involuntary layoff to impacted employees "in coming weeks," the spokesperson said earlier this month.

Boeing cut 10% of its workforce last year.

BP slashed 7,700 staff and contractor positions worldwide.

BP told Business Insider in January that it planned to cut 4,700 staff and 3,000 contractors, amounting to about 5% of its global workforce.

The cuts were part of a program to "simplify and focus" BP that began last year.

"We are strengthening our competitiveness and building in resilience as we lower our costs, drive performance improvement and play to our distinctive capabilities," the company said.

Bridgewater cut about 90 staff.

Bridgewater Associates cut 7% of its staff in January in an effort to stay lean, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The layoffs at the world's largest hedge fund bring its head count back to where it was in 2023, the person said.

The company's founder, Ray Dalio, said in a 2019 interview that about 30% of new employees were leaving the firm within 18 months.

Chevron is slashing up to 20% of its global headcount

Oil giant Chevron plans to cull 15% to 20% of its global workforce by the end of 2026, the company said in a statement to Business Insider in February.

Chevron employed 45,600 people as of December 2023, which means the layoff could cut 9,000 jobs.

The move aims to reduce costs and simplify the company's business as it completes its acquisition of oil producer Hess, which is held up in legal limbo. It is expected to save the company $2 billion to $3 billion by the end of 2026, the company said.

"Chevron is taking action to simplify our organizational structure, execute faster and more effectively, and position the company for stronger long-term competitiveness," a Chevron spokesperson said in a statement.

The cuts follow a series of layoffs at other oil and gas companies, including BP and natural gas producer EQT.

CNN plans to cut 200 jobs.

Cable news giant CNN cut about 200 television-focused roles as part of a digital pivot. The cuts amounted to about 6% of the company's workforce.

In a memo sent to staff on January 23, CNN's CEO Mark Thompson said he aimed to "shift CNN's gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN's future as one of the world's greatest news organizations."

Estée Lauder will cut as many as 7,000 jobs

Cosmetics giant Estée Lauder said in its second-quarter earnings release on February 4 that it will cut between 5,800 and 7,000 jobs as the company restructures over the next two years.

The cuts will focus on "rightsizing" certain teams, and it will look to outsource certain services. The company says it expects annual gross benefits of between $0.8 billion and $1.0 billion before tax.

Kohl's is reducing about 10% of its roles

Department store Kohl's announced on January 28 that it reduced about 10% of its corporate roles to "increase efficiencies" and "improve profitability for the long-term health and benefit of the business," a spokesperson told BI.

"Kohl's reduced approximately 10 percent of the roles that report into its corporate offices," the spokesperson said. "More than half of the total reduction will come from closing open positions while the remainder of the positions were currently held by our associates."

Less than 200 existing employees of the company would be impacted, she added.

This follows the company's announcement on January 9 that it would shutter 27 underperforming stores across 15 states by April.

The retailer has been struggling with declining sales, reporting an 8.8% decline in net sales in the third quarter of 2024.

Its previous CEO, Tom Kingsbury, stepped down on January 15. The company's board appointed Ashley Buchanan, a retail veteran who had held top jobs in The Michaels Companies, Macy's, and Walmart, as the new CEO.

Meta is cutting 5% of its workforce.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff he "decided to raise the bar on performance management" and will act quickly to "move out low-performers," according to an internal memo seen by BI in January.

Those cuts started this month, according to records obtained by BI. Teams overseeing Facebook, the Horizon virtual reality platform, as well as logistics were among the hardest hit.

Previously, the company had laid off more than 21,000 workers since 2022.

Microsoft made performance-based job cuts in January

Microsoft cut an unspecified number of jobs in January based on employees' performance.

Workers were told that they wouldn't receive severance and that their benefits, such as medical insurance, would stop immediately, BI reported.

The company also laid off some employees in January at divisions including gaming and sales. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to say how many jobs were cut on the affected teams.

Salesforce is cutting more than 1,000 jobs

Bloomberg reported in February that Salesforce, a cloud-based customer management software company, will slash more than 1,000 jobs from its nearly 73,000-strong workforce.

Affected employees will be eligible to apply to open internal roles, the outlet reported. The company is currently hiring salespeople focused on the company's new AI-powered products.

The cuts come despite Salesforce reporting a strong financial performance during its third-quarter earnings in December.

Representatives for Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Sonos cuts about 200 jobs

Sonos, a California-based audio equipment company, said in a February 5 release that it's cutting about 200 roles.

The announcement came nearly a month after Sonos CEO Patrick Spence stepped down from his position following a disastrous app rollout. The company's interim CEO Tom Conrad said in the statement that the layoff was part of an effort to create a "simpler organization."

"One thing I've observed first hand is that we've become mired in too many layers that have made collaboration and decision-making harder than it needs to be," Conrad said. "So across the company today we are reorganizing into flatter, smaller, and more focused teams."

Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan announced in February that the company is laying off 15% of its corporate staff, or about 1,750 employees.

He said impacted workers will keep their pay, benefits, and bonuses through late April, when the separations will take effect.

The company told investors the cuts would provide a "partial year 2025 savings to be approximately $210 million and full-year 2026 savings to be approximately $300 million."

The move comes as Southwest tries to cut costs amid profitability problems. Jordan said this is the first significant layoff the company has had in its 53-year history.

An activist hedge fund took a stake in Southwest in June and has since helped restructure its board and change its business model to keep up with a changing industry. For example, it plans to end its long-standing open-seating policy to generate more seating revenue.

In recent months, the company has also reduced flight crew positions in Atlanta to cut costs.

Starbucks is laying off 1,100 corporate staff.

Starbucks will notify 1,100 corporate employees that they have been laid off on February 25.

CEO Brian Niccol said in a memo that the layoffs will make Starbucks "operate more efficiently, increase accountability, reduce complexity and drive better integration."

The layoffs won't affect employees at Starbucks stores, the company said.

Niccol told employees that layoffs were on the way in a separate memo in January. The company is trying to improve results after sales slid last year.

Stripe laid off 300 employees.

Payments platform Stripe laid off 300 employees, primarily in product, engineering, and operations, according to a January 20 memo obtained by BI.

Chief People Officer Rob McIntosh said in the memo that the company still planned on growing its head count to about 10,000 employees by the end of the year.

The Washington Post cut 4% of its non-newsroom workforce.

The Washington Post eliminated less than 100 employees in an effort to cut costs, Reuters reported in January.

A spokesperson told the wire service that the changes would occur across multiple areas of the business and indicated that the cuts wouldn't affect the newsroom.

"The Washington Post is continuing its transformation to meet the needs of the industry, build a more sustainable future and reach audiences where they are," the spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

Workday cutmore than 8% of its workforce

Workday, the human-resources software company, said in February that it is cutting 8.5% of its workforce, or around 1,750 employees. The layoffs came as the company focuses more on artificial intelligence.

In a note to employees, CEO Carl Eschenbach said that Workday will focus on hiring in areas related to artificial intelligence and work to expand its global presence.

"The environment we're operating in today demands a new approach, particularly given our size and scale," Eschenbach wrote. He said that affected employees will get at least 12 weeks of pay.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

If you're an employee with a tip about coming job cuts, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

• Ann Telnaes, a longtime Washington Post cartoonist, has announced she is quitting her position.
• She said the move came after a cartoon featuring the Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, was rejected.
• The Post's opinion editor said he disagreed "with her interpretation of events."

Ann Telnaes, an editorial cartoonist who has worked for The Washington Post since 2008, announced she was quitting her position after one of her cartoons was rejected.

The cartoon in question depicted Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaires kneeling in front of a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

In a Substack post, Telnaes wrote that the idea behind the cartoon was to criticize billionaire tech and media chief executives she said "have been doing their best to curry favor" with Trump.

Alongside Bezos, the cartoon shows Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Walt Disney mascot Mickey Mouse.

"I've never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now," Telnaes wrote, adding that the paper's decision to kill the cartoon was "a game changer…and dangerous for a free press."

"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable," she continued. "For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post."

The Post's opinions editor, David Shipley, said in a statement that while he respected Telnaes and her work for the publication, he "must disagree with her interpretation of events."

"Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force," he said. "My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition."

Jeff Stein, a White House economics reporter at the Post, reshared the cartoon and a link to Telnaes' Substack post on X.

Telnaes, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 2001, has long been an advocate for free speech and editorial cartoons as a tool for civic debate.

She serves on the advisory board for the Geneva-based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and was formerly a board member of Cartoonists Rights.

Telnaes concluded her Substack post by quoting the Post's slogan: "Democracy Dies in Darkness."

Jeff Bezos has owned The Washington Post since 2013, when his holding company, Nash Holdings, bought the newspaper for $250 million.

Business Insider has contacted Telnaes and Shipley for comment.

• Jeff Bezos prefers "messy" meetings to rehearsed ones for genuine discussions.
• Bezos emphasized seeking truth in meetings, not polished pitches or presentations.
• His ideal meetings include six-page memos, a study period, and open, messy discussions.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos prefers "messy" meetings to ones that team members have rehearsed, he told The New York Times DealBook Summit last week.

The world's second-richest person and owner of the Washington Post said his approach to internal meetings is to not finish them until he feels that everything has been discussed.

"Messy is good," Bezos told The New York Times.

Bezos explained that most of the meetings he considers useful have six-page memos, a 30-minute "study hall" period to read them, and then a messy discussion.

"I like the memos to be like angels singing from on high, so clear and beautiful," he said. "And then the meeting can be messy."

Bezos said that internal presentations should be about seeking the truth — not pitches to him or any senior executive.

"You don't want the whole thing to be figured out and presented to you," he said, adding that he would prefer to be part of the "sausage-making" process.

"I'm very skeptical if the meeting's not messy," he said.

"Show me the ugly bits. I always ask, are there any dissenting opinions on the team? I want to try to get to the controversy," Bezos said.

"Let's make this meeting messy. Help me make it messy."

Bezos is well known for his strong views about how meetings should be run, particularly what has become known "two-pizza rule," where a meeting is limited to the number of people that could be fed with two large pizzas. He also dislikes the use of PowerPoints in company meetings.

• Some journalists are leaving their jobs and starting one-person subscription businesses.
• Jason Koebler and three other veterans of Vice Media wanted to build something bigger: an actual news site.
• They launched 404 Media in the summer of 2023. Today, it looks like a sustainable success story.

Lots of people dream of quitting their jobs and going into business for themselves. Jason Koebler and three co-workers actually did it. It looks like it's working.

In the summer of 2023, Koebler, who used to edit Vice Media's Motherboard tech section, and three former Vice co-workers launched 404 Media, a tech news site they co-own. Each of them kicked in $1,000 to get it off the ground.

Fast-forward to today, and Koebler says the company is already generating something in the $900,000-a-year range, funded almost entirely with subscriptions. Even after tech and legal costs, that's enough to call 404 a success. And that allows them to write whatever they want: Like this recent piece looking at Elon Musk and Twitter/X's involvement in the Alex Jones bankruptcy case.

This self-funded business model isn't going to work for everyone and everything. But in a grim climate for media in general and journalism specifically, it's great to hear about things that work. You can hear the entire conversation I had with Koebler on my Channels podcast; what follows are edited excerpts from our chat.

It seems like you guys are making a real business here: You can pay the four of yourselves grown-up journalism salaries.

We are. It's going better than I could have ever imagined. We're also at a point where I think we'll be able to bring new employees on.

When you launched, what did you think you'd need to do, at minimum, to keep this afloat? Did you think about a scenario where it's working, but you needed to have side gigs?

When we decided to do this, we launched in August 2023, and we told ourselves that we would do it until January.

And right after we launched, in the first couple of days, we got like 600 subscribers. We fell into this kind of middle ground — enough people signed up that there was clearly an audience, but not enough signed up where [we knew this was] definitely going to work.

It was unclear whether it was going to survive, even though the response was amazing.

But then the really cool thing was every time we had a big scoop or a big story, we got new subscribers.

Your structure is egalitarian. I'm assuming you're all getting paid equally.

We're all the same. We're all 25% owners. The management of the company has been easier than I thought that it would be. I think that if we were to grow, we would probably have to figure out how to manage new hires, and what ownership would look like then.

What happens when you guys have a throw-down and then the vote is two vs. two?

There are no votes. We told each other from the outset that anyone can veto anything. So, if any one person is like "I hate this idea," then we just don't do it.

I wanted to ask you about this great piece you wrote recently: "The Billionaire Is the Threat, not the Solution." It's a personal story about your dad who worked on the printing presses of The Washington Post for decades. And about Jeff Bezos and the non-endorsement story. Your argument is that you're going to continue to have these problems as long as you're looking for billionaires to own your media.

I agree with you. I don't think we can rely on billionaires to fund our media. And this model that you've built works for you and your three coworkers and co-owners. But it can't work for everything. What kind of journalism does your model support? What does it not support?

This sort of subscription, independent model works for us. We've created four journalism jobs. Other independent media companies have created a few dozen more. But it's still like a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket.

My theory is that there can be a lot of them. I really do think that. 7,000 people have subscribed to us. The market can support a lot more of these.

But what are the kinds of stories and projects you can't do because you don't have apparatus, staff, whatever?

I think that there's the "spend three, six, 12 months on an investigative story and then publish it and maybe it wins an award and tons of people read it — or maybe no one reads it" is a model we're not even trying to do. I think that's an important model and maybe one better suited for nonprofits and The New York Times and Washington Post.

I think the reason that it's working for us is we are breaking stories, we are telling stories, that you can't find elsewhere.