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Ryan’s seemingly unfettered influence has rankled staffers since last week. About 30 staffers have joined the paper’s union since Wednesday, according to Post Guild leadership, including some of the newsroom’s top stars. The guild has seen its newsroom representation grow from around 47 percent of eligible staffers—which includes both newsroom employees and business operations—in March 2019 to 62 percent as of Friday. Of eligible newsroom employees alone, 73 percent are guild members, indicating rising growth as the Post has grown behemothic.
Even some editors have acknowledged the chaos Ryan’s sudden declaration last week caused.
“This has been an exceedingly difficult week and we know you are upset and anxious about what is to come,” national editors Matea Gold and Philip Rucker wrote on Thursday morning, adding that they were committed to their staff and providing answers. “We are confident this newsroom can weather this moment, drawing on the talent and grit that powers us every day, The public is counting on us to do so.”
Some staffers feel the Post has not capitalized strongly on the newsroom’s success, even as the industry has seen advertising flatline. The New York Times reported that the paper was on track to lose money by the end of 2022 as digital subscribers and advertising fell.
Ryan’s reaction in the wake of the Trump years—including his sudden layoff announcement—has been compared to panic among newsroom journalists, even as he said during Wednesday’s town hall that he wanted to build better content to drive subscriptions.
“It sort of feels like the newsroom is getting punished for the sales team’s failures,” the staffer said. “[The Washington Post’s] journalism remains world class. It’s not the newsroom’s fault the business side has failed to capitalize on that.”
Ryan did tout one product during the town hall: NewsPrint, which measures a reader’s news diet in a feature similar to Spotify’s “Wrapped.” “It does feel a little bit like throwing spaghetti against the wall in a number of ways,” another staffer told Confider. “It does feel like the Post has lost a little bit of its swagger after Marty Baron.” Guild members have discussed the possibility of a vote of a no-confidence letter against Ryan, but there are no formal plans as of now.
It remains unclear how the Post moves forward, and who it keeps, but it did appear the paper wanted its employees to forget the past. The paper uploaded Wednesday’s town hall to its internal system GuidePost last week—but cut it off just as guild employees began questioning Ryan.
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