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Washington Post Shuts Down Sports Department

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Feb 4th, 2026 · 9:42 AM EST

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The WaPo cuts are going down today and one of the departments they’re getting rid of is sports:

NEW: Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray says the paper will be closing its sports department in its current form and plans to cover it as a "cultural phenomenon." “We plan to retain several reporters to join features” and cover sports through there, he tells staff

— Corbin Bolies (@CorbinBolies) February 4, 2026

So the WaPo is basically doing what the Inquirer did with Alex Coffey and Matt Breen, former beat writers who now author sports-related feature stories instead.

There were earlier reports that the Post wouldn’t send its two Nationals writers to spring training, but I guess that’s moot now if the entire department is being shut down. That means no local coverage of the Nats, Caps, Commanders, or Wizards. Only two of those teams are worth covering right now, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a sad day in the journalism world when the paper that launched the careers of guys like John Feinstein, Mike Wilbon, and Tony Kornheiser decides to axe sports entirely despite being owned by one of the richest people on Earth.

That’s not to say that anybody should be naive to the realities of the journalism business. It’s tough sledding out there. You can get your news from a variety of places and the advent of social media and artificial intelligence has brought about a new era of citizen journalism and influencer content. Some of it is good and some of it is complete shit, but the context is that big tech brought the guardrails down and allowed everybody to play the game, which resulted in a saturation of sorts that forced a lot of us to either sink or swim.

The Philadelphia Inquirer survived because a once-in-a-generation philanthropist swooped in to save the day. That’s not necessarily replicable, and journalism is a private sector enterprise, which means we’re bound to the same rules as anybody else, that a business needs to make money to stay afloat. You can certainly go more granular to determine whether or not the WaPo made the right decision here, based on what the balance sheet says, but the point is that we’re not guaranteed employment “just because.” Such is life in free market Capitalism with supply and demand, no matter how we romanticize journalism internally or advocate for its importance.

It’s more a symbolic loss than anything. This isn’t The Pottstown Mercury* deciding it will no longer cover Methacton swimming. This is the WaPo, one of the biggest legacy media outlets in the country. It’s kind of like Beasley cutting into Preston and Steve, right? If P&S aren’t even immune to budget cuts, what hope is there for the rest of us? That’s the takeaway.

Now click on this fucking link or else I’m gonna get laid off, too:

*shoutout to the people at the Mercury hanging on