‘What Do You Think Went Wrong?’ CNBC Host Presses Jeff Bezos on Washington Post Layoffs

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin pressed Jeff Bezos on Tuesday on whether it was actually necessary to lay off 30% of The Washington Post’s staff and “what went wrong” at the paper.

Sorkin sat down with Bezos for a wide-ranging interview from Florida for Squawk Box where the pair discussed everything from President Donald Trump to taxes to Amazon’s controversial Melania Trump documentary.

Sorkin also pressed Bezos on recent sweeping layoffs at The Post and whether Bezos wants to own the media outlet at all.

“When I bought The Post, it was very unprofitable when I brought it. The newsroom was even smaller than it is today. We turned it around in two years, it was profitable for six years. I put all that money back in The Post and grew the newsroom, so we’ve shrunk it back some now. But we haven’t shrunk it back to what it was when I bought it,” Bezos told Sorkin.

“So what do you think went wrong then?” Sorkin asked.

Bezos explained that he felt his paper did not properly “adapt” and needed more financial discipline.

Check out the exchange below:

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: One of the critiques, by the way, and this is may be the wealth critique and everything else, is, you know, we just said the company laid off about 30% of its staff and there’s a lot of people out there who said, Jeff’s super wealthy, he’s talked about this being a public trust, it’s something that he bought early on, how much do you care about that piece of it? Why lay people up? Why fire people? Why are you subsidizing the business if in fact —

JEFF BEZOS: Because The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet.

SORKIN: But does it?

BEZOS: Yes.

SORKIN: That’s a question because some people say it should be a trust.

BEZOS: Let me tell you why. Because it’s a measure of its relevance. If people won’t pay for our product, we’re not doing — it’s not a good enough product. It’s like, you know, doing — it would be like poetry without rhyming. It’s too easy. So, we want — it’s got to be something that people will pay for, because that’s a signal. It’s a sign that we’re providing a relevant service. Your paper, The New York Times, you guys make a ton of money. You guys are doing very well financially, and you’re providing the service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that too. And guess what I told them, you know, when we were planning those layoffs, I didn’t pick who was going to be laid off or which departments. I said, follow the data. Follow the data. And I said, there’s one exception to this. Don’t follow the data on investigative reporting. The heart of The Post is investigative reporting, and guess what? Our newsroom today, even after the layoffs, is still larger than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. And we just won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, the most prestigious Pulitzer for our investigation in the DOGE. The Post is going to continue to be an important institution. In fact, it’s going to be a more important institution because of this financial discipline. It needs to be relevant to readers. It needs stand on its own two feet. I don’t want it to be a charity. It doesn’t need to be and it shouldn’t be.

SORKIN: Do you want to own it? And the reason I ask is you’ve talked about how you are, by default, to some degree a conflicted owner, given you own all of these other businesses.

BEZOS: I think an ideal owner — yes, my vision is still to make sure The Post is a, you know, when I bought The Post, it was very unprofitable when I brought it. The newsroom was even smaller than it is today. We turned it around in two years, it was profitable for six years. I put all that money back in The Post and grew the newsroom, so we’ve shrunk it back some now. But we haven’t shrunk it back to what it was when I bought it.

SORKIN: So what do you think went wrong then? I mean, you had this super successful period.

BEZOS: Yeah, what went wrong is we did not adapt. So this is what the news business — if you go back to the, I don’t know how much time you want to spend on this, but if you back to ’90s, the local monopoly newspaper was the greatest business in the world. It was the printing press. The Washington Post had 70% of households in the Washington metro area, and it made money hand over fist. We live in a completely different environment now. It’s not even — it’s nothing like — now you have to work hard to make a living in the news.

Watch above via CNBC.

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