Hundreds of people gathered Thursday in a rally with signs and chants to support the Washington Post journalists after job cuts.
Less than a day after being laid off, employees expressed their intent to continue producing journalism, despite their disappointment with the state of the Post.
“A lot of us don’t know [what’s next],” said Ariel Plotnick, who said she was laid off as one of the editors at the Post’s audio team. “I think whatever we end up doing, our commitment [is] to public service and holding power to account in some way. We’re all gonna try to continue in line with those values.”
Seeing the hundreds of attendees rally in support of the Post was “really powerful,” Plotnick said.
“You work really hard on a podcast or an article or a video and it goes out into the world and you have no idea if people hear or read it, so seeing loyal subscribers come out … (It) puts faces to otherwise invisible people that we hope are consuming our content,” she told Capital News Service.
On Wednesday the Post laid off nearly 300 staffers, according to Jon Schleuss, president of the News Guild and organizer of the rally. At least one rally speaker complained about the shutdown of full sections at the Post.
Executive Editor Matt Murray released a statement in Thursday’s print edition, saying the company is restructuring their newsroom “amid sweeping changes in [the journalism] industry.” CNS contacted the Post for a comment, but did not receive a response prior to publication.
Schleuss expressed his frustration with owner Jeff Bezos— who bought the paper in 2013 – arguing that the layoffs represented “attacking democracy at its core.”
“We see other publications like The New York Times running at a profit,” he told CNS. “That could happen at the Washington Post.”
Schleuss said that the guild had the rally planned before the new wave of layoffs came. After the news, the rally continued, hundreds holding signs and chanting in unison.
Rally-goers carried signs that read: “Save the Post,” “Free Press” and “Democracy Dies in Darkness— Bezos is the Dark.”
Twenty minutes into the hour-long rally, a speaker standing under the entrance of the Post headquarters yelled out to gatherers.
“When workers are under attack, what do we do?” he yelled.
“Stand up fight back,” the crowd yelled back in response.
Washington Post Interactive Designer and Guild member Joe Fox said he did not lose his job in the round of layoffs but came out to support the journalists who did.
“We’re here to sort of call attention to just the immense number of talented journalists who lost their jobs, and the fact that it’s going to be really difficult for the Post as an institution to continue doing the incredible work that we were doing before,” Fox said.
Fox hopes the rally today will cause decision makers to listen to journalists’ voices and reconsider the layoffs. He said the job cuts make his job harder.
“I would hope that the people who make decisions will see the number of people that have come out to support us, which is a lot, and maybe listen to what we have to say,” Fox said. “And who knows, maybe they’ll think about reconsidering, I don’t know.”
For Post supporter Elena Sorokina, the layoffs felt personal.
“It means a lot because I interned at the post in 2011 … It really helped me in my education and career-wise. So it feels really personal to have that loss,” Sorokina said. “On the professional level, I’m really hurting for the communities here in the D.C. region that are losing this vital coverage of what’s happening.”
Sorokina also stated that the job cuts cause concerns for local residents as well as the quality of the Post.
“It’s unfair to the communities, unfair to the residents that live here, and it’s a huge disservice to the region,” Sorokina said. “We are devastated to learn about all the reporters that are being laid off on the national level and international news. I’m very concerned about what’s going to be left of this paper.”