By Isabella DiAmore
The Washington Post was considered “the best sports department in America,” says Jason Murray, a former sports editor who spent about five years at The Post.
“That’s how we tried to carry ourselves,” he added. “With the tradition from George [Solomon] all the way down to us, but on top of that, with the work itself, there was something special about the collegial atmosphere and how we pushed ourselves and tried to make ourselves better.”
But over the years, the industry has changed. Newsrooms have reshaped their fundamentals, moving away from print to digital. New publishers and owners have pushed agendas — from content coverage to downsizing newsrooms — to preserve profitability.
The Washington Post, known for its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of national politics, has experienced this firsthand. On Feb. 4, The Post announced that it was eliminating its sports department as part of a mass layoff of one-third of the company’s workforce, which impacted more than 300 employees.
Former sports writers and editors from The Post spoke on a panel at the 2026 Associated Press Sports Editors Summer Conference in Arlington, Virginia, about the drastic layoff, what was happening in the newsroom beforehand, and the fallout.
The panel was moderated by Murray, now The Athletic’s Deputy Editorial Director, and included Ava Wallace, a senior tennis writer for The Athletic, Emily Giambalvo, a data reporter for The Athletic, Matt Rennie, a senior managing editor for rapid investigation at The Athletic, and Joe Tone, who remained on staff with The Post, now serving as a senior editor.
Rennie, who worked in The Post’s sports department for 26 years, sensed a major shift in the newsroom dating back to 2024, when the company notably faced significant internal turmoil and financial challenges.
“It really started to feel pretty adrift,” Rennie said. “We put so much preparation and resources, like real monetary and human resources, when we covered the Paris Olympics — and maybe I was tuned out to even some of the internal turmoil before that — it goes OK, head down, let’s stay focused on the [Paris] Olympics. I felt like we did well, and then we came back from that and ever since then, it just seemed kind of like one sort of semi-crisis after another.”
There was a lack of direction. Many editors and writers worked in limbo, while still trying to produce quality stories.
Giambalvo, who spent eight years at The Post reporting on data-driven stories and covered college sports, gymnastics, and the Olympics, recalled seeing reports that sports could be in trouble. Though the elimination of the department blindsided her.
“We all thought that maybe we would turn into a Wall Street Journal-style sports section,” Giambalvo said. “I did not think it was going to be the whole department, but from October on, it was part of our lives on a daily basis, like knowing that we were in trouble. It was really jarring to the outside world when it happened, and certainly the scale. But for us, we really had been living this for a very long time, at least what felt like a very long time.
“Morale was terrible. People can’t do good, ambitious work when we’re all unhappy.”
It didn’t come as a surprise that layoffs were coming. Two days before Feb. 4, Rennie and Giambalvo packed up their belongings from the office. On the day of the announcement, it was executive editor Matt Murray who relayed the news over Zoom. A half hour later, an official email was sent acknowledging the layoff.
“It was an awkward, [crappy] day,” said Tone, who joined The Post in 2019. “The next month was probably spent sort of working my way down the list of my team of seven reporters, talking with them, trying to make sure that they find jobs.”
Some instantly found jobs, while others are still searching. Murray said there were 45 people in the department and 13 are still looking for jobs. While layoffs are scary for any company, Murray and the four panelists emphasized that remembering your why can go a long way.
“This business sucks, we all know this,” Rennie said. “But the work is good, and the people that are doing it are good, and you get to work with good people doing honest stuff that really enriches the lives of your customers in a meaningful way. And not everybody gets to say that.”
The best advice Wallace would offer to someone who may see restructuring in their company is to become versatile in other areas of journalism, including video editing and podcasting. Wallace, who spent a decade at The Post, was not part of the layoffs, she believes, because of her multiplatform skillset.
As for The Post, Will Lewis, the former publisher, stepped down not long after the layoffs and was replaced by interim Jeff D’Onofrio. The Post has since rehired a Washington Nationals, Commanders, and Capitals beat writer, while “cobbling together” coverage of the Wizards, Mystics, and Spirit.
“It’s not what it used to be, and it probably will never be what it used to be,” Tone said. “But I hope it’s the beginning of a slow kind of building back upward.”
