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The Washington Post, one of the largest newspapers in the U.S., announced on Wednesday that it is laying off a third of all staff — a move that owner Jeff Bezos could prevent personally without his net worth changing in any meaningful way.

As of Wednesday, Bezos’s net worth was listed as just under $249 billion by Forbes. Just last year, he spent an estimated $50 million on his wedding. He reportedly owns a $500 million yacht that is so big it has its own mini-yacht. His company, Amazon, just spent $75 million on a propagandistic movie about President Trump’s wife.

When current Post CEO Will Lewis took over operation of the paper in 2024, he told staff that the paper had lost $177 million over the past two years — losses that had triggered several rounds of layoffs up until that point.

The paper’s recent losses haven’t been publicly reported. However, Bezos bought the paper for $250 million in 2013 — equivalent to roughly $345 million today. His net worth was also considered remarkable at the time, at $28 billion. Since then, it has been multiplied by nine.

If the paper’s losses were to be reasonably estimated at $100 million a year, which reports say is the amount the paper lost in 2023, Bezos could cover these losses personally and they would amount to a rounding error for him, far........

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