Kamal Ghorui
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has criticised The Washington Post’s decision to lay off his son, foreign affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor, describing it as a “perverse act of self-immolation”.Reacting on X, Tharoor wrote: “The bizarre thing about this so-called ‘business decision’ by The Washington Post is that @ishaantharoor’s column flourished on the Internet,” adding that Ishaan Tharoor had “500,000 (half a million plus!) individual subscribers” for his WorldView newsletter. He said he had met foreign ministers, diplomats and scholars around the world who read the newsletter daily, and argued that the newspaper could have tried monetising that reach instead of abolishing it.Ishaan Tharoor was among those laid off as part of a major restructuring at The Washington Post that affected around 300 employees and significantly reduced the newspaper’s international coverage. Several international correspondents and editors also announced their exits on social media.In a post on X, Ishaan Tharoor said he had been laid off along with much of the international staff, adding that he was “heartbroken” for the newsroom and colleagues he had worked with over nearly 12 years. In a separate post, he called it “a bad day” and shared an image of an empty newsroom. He also wrote about launching WorldView in 2017 and thanked the newsletter’s roughly half-a-million subscribers.The Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Washington Post Guild, which represents staff, issued a statement urging continued investment in the newspaper’s journalism.The layoffs at The Washington Post are part of a wider restructuring that has seen the paper sharply scale back its global and national reporting operations. Around 300 employees were affected across departments, with the international desk among the hardest hit.As part of the overhaul, the Post has reduced its foreign bureaus and eliminated several international reporting roles, effectively shrinking its on-the-ground presence in regions including the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Multiple senior correspondents and editors confirmed their exits publicly, some noting that entire regional teams had been disbanded.The restructuring has also led to the winding down or closure of several editorial initiatives, including podcasts and specialist sections, as management seeks to cut costs and refocus resources amid sustained financial pressure on US legacy newsrooms.The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has faced declining digital subscriptions and advertising revenue in recent years, prompting repeated rounds of cost-cutting. The newspaper’s union has warned that continued reductions to reporting staff risk undermining its journalistic mission, particularly its ability to cover international affairs comprehensively.The current round of layoffs marks one of the most significant contractions of the Post’s global reporting footprint in its modern history, signalling a strategic retreat from expansive international coverage at a time of heightened geopolitical instability.
