“Democracy Dies in Darkness, Huh?”: Washington Post Publisher Stuns Newsroom With Layoff Bombshell—And Hasty Exit

The Washington Post Guild went into Wednesday’s town hall with a plan. Anticipating that publisher Fred Ryan wasn’t going to take live questions—he wasn’t so happy the last time he was publicly confronted by a staffer in such a forum—they’d crowd-sourced a list of questions in advance and got more than 70 staffers to send a version of these questions to HR, according to a member of the Guild. The Guild had 10 designated questioners who would pop up during the Q&A portion of Wednesday’s town hall. But when that time came, after an hour-plus meeting of presentations for various… Read Full Article