Washington Post staff laid off while in Milan still hope to find beauty in the Olympics

Chris Jones reports from Milan.

In the last hours before these Olympics begin, and the flame is lit, and the cheering starts, a smaller, sad drama played out in a little white box of an office in the Main Media Centre in Milan. A sign on the door read: The Washington Post.

Behind that door, two sportswriters, Rick Maese and Les Carpenter, worked in a space with enough chairs for six. 

There had been rumours for weeks that the Post’s vaunted sports section — the last great newspaper sports section in America — was going to be eliminated on Wednesday in widespread cuts.

The Post had planned on sending 12 journalists to the Olympics, but its executives had decided to eat $80,000 in sunk travel costs rather than lay them off while they were on the road. After an internal and external outcry, the executives changed course and sent a skeleton crew of four, including Maese and Carpenter.

The rumours of a Wednesday dispatching proved true. An all-hands Zoom call was scheduled for 2:30 p.m. local time, 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Maese and Carpenter sat in silence and watched it together. Their section was gone, part of a larger restructuring ordered by owner Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and fourth richest person in the world.

There was a little hope left. Some members of the department would be moved to another section. Employees were told that they would receive an email after the call informing them whether they would be let go or retained.

At 3:00 p.m. in Milan, Carpenter opened his email. “I’m out,” he said.

Maese was told shortly after that he had been kept.

“Congratulations,” Carpenter said to his friend.

Outside the door, the usual buzz of anticipation continued. The Olympics are a kind of giant machine, an enormous