• by Ray Schultz , Yesterday

The Washington Post is offering voluntary buyouts to staffers who have worked there for 10 or more years, to employees in the video department and to all members of the copy and sports copy desks as part of its newsroom transformation plan.

The Voluntary Separation Program offers are part of an effort “aimed at reshaping and modernizing the newsroom for the current environment,” writes Matt Murray, executive editor in a memo to staff that was shared on X by Ben Mullin of The New York Times. “Like the rest of our industry, we are adapting to changing habits and new technologies that are transforming news experiences.” 

When it comes to copy editing, “we aim in the coming months to combine operations to one desk that will be part of the central news hub and ultimately will serve our digital products full-time,” Murray adds.

In the case of the video team, the goal is to “place much greater emphasis on developing repeatable franchises and more personality driven formats for YouTube, other social media channels and off-platform more broadly, while embedding some video producers and facilitators in the core newsroom to help all our journalists and artists produce more video for our products,” Murray explains.

On another front, the paper will be naming a print editor for its new print desk in the coming weeks.