Shashi Tharoor Slams Washington Post Over Son Ishaan’s Layoff, Calls It ‘Bizarre’

Senior Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor has strongly criticised The Washington Post for laying off his son, journalist Ishaan Tharoor, describing the decision as “bizarre” and a self-destructive business move. The layoffs are part of a sweeping restructuring at the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper that has seen more than 300 journalists lose their jobs globally.

Reacting on social media, Shashi Tharoor highlighted the success of Ishaan’s WorldView newsletter, which he said had more than 500,000 individual subscribers and a strong international readership. He argued that shutting down such a widely followed platform made little commercial sense.

“The bizarre thing about this so-called ‘business decision’ is that Ishaan Tharoor’s column flourished online, with over half a million subscribers,” Tharoor wrote. He added that global leaders, diplomats and scholars regularly read the newsletter, and suggested that monetising such reach would have been logical instead of abolishing it, calling the move a “perverse act of self-immolation”.

The Washington Post recently announced one of the largest workforce reductions in its nearly 150-year history, eliminating roughly one-third of its newsroom positions. Executive Editor Matt Murray described the decision as painful but necessary, citing declining digital traffic and financial losses reportedly nearing $100 million in recent years.

Ishaan Tharoor, a global affairs columnist who anchored the WorldView column, confirmed his layoff on social media. Expressing heartbreak over the newsroom cuts, he said he had built the newsletter since 2017 to help readers better understand global affairs and America’s role in the world. He thanked the more than half a million loyal readers who followed the column over the years.

The restructuring has significantly altered the newspaper’s operations, with entire departments such as sports being dismantled, foreign bureaus scaled back, and long-running sections like books discontinued. Several international correspondents, editors and staff across business and audio teams were also affected, including the paper’s Delhi bureau chief, Pranshu Verma.

The layoffs underscore the broader challenges facing legacy media organisations as they grapple with falling readership, shrinking advertising revenue and shifts in how audiences consume news in the digital age.