In the days before Christmas, Washington Post readers could tuck into an Amy Joyce parenting column on setting boundaries for kids, a John Kelly piece on some oddball squirrel behavior, or a sorrowful Theresa Vargas column on a disabled veteran repeatedly denied benefits.

All were written with empathy, were authentic and distinctive, and each served to create a personal way for the paper to connect with its readers.

But you won’t ever read them again in the Post, as all three columns came to an end with tempting buyouts and an end to publishing local perspectives in Metro, according to former Post editors and reporters.

At least 240 Post writers, columnists, editors, and other employees on the business side were expected to leave in the final days of 2023, significantly reshaping the paper in ways that aren’t yet fully realized. Washingtonian even reported that so many staffers took the buyouts that managers started begging some to stay.

Unfortunately for readers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, local coverage appears to have taken the biggest hit, according to Metro journalists who announced their departure and interviews with current and former Post reporters and editors. The Post did not provide a breakdown of the cuts, though a spokesperson noted that the buyouts avoided the need for widespread layoffs.

“There’s a significant thinning out of the local coverage … it’s a real shame for the local community,” says Robert McCartney, a former Post editor and columnist. McCartney says he thinks the paper has opted to focus local coverage primarily on politics, crime, and transportation, and let most other topics drift off the margins. (Though transportation reporter Justin George just announced his departure.)

Tom Sherwood, who spent 15 years at the paper in the 1970s and ’80s before starting a second career as a broadcast journalist, believes Post owner Jeff Bezos sees the DMV region as a “backwater” and that his goal of creating an international, digital-only product has no need for local coverage or color.

“The Post is no longer a daily newspaper … you can’t go to the paper and read about what happened yesterday. It’s just not there,” says Sherwood, who, like most people to speak with City Paper about the Post buyouts, lamented the impact of lost local coverage on democracy and accountability. (Sherwood is also a City Paper contributor.)

Earlier this fall, the Post moved with ruthless determination to redefine itself (again) and erase a $100 million deficit that most Posties blame squarely on recently departed publisher Fred Ryan. Ryan left the Post last year to create a new Center on Public Civility at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute; attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.

As envisioned, the buyouts would offer up to two years of paid salary as a lump sum, along with a retroactive pay raise in exchange for taking early retirement. However, there was uncertainty about how many people would opt in, leading to some staff being persuaded to stay while others broke the news to colleagues over social media.

For the paper’s longtime readers, perhaps the most visible losses will be the local columnists: Kelly and Courtland Milloy, who began writing at the paper in 1975, have both left. Other Posties say Vargas and Petula Dvorak will also be ending their columns, though neither of them have publicly said so, and multiple attempts to reach them were unsuccessful. A Post spokesperson says the paper “is exploring different approaches to reinventing traditional print-based Metro columns but has not made any official decisions on that front.”

Milloy often ran counter to the prevailing notion of race politics in the city. But as a Black man at a paper filled with White editors, Milloy was an essential counterpoint on the issues of the day—unafraid to antagonize with his takes against creating dedicated bike lanes or how gentrification has curdled the District. Now he’s gone.

Kelly founded KidsPost, which families used as a way of teaching an interest in current events to their children. It ran in the back of the Style section and broke down big news stories of the day into basic language that could poke the curiosity of young readers. KidsPost itself was eliminated in early 2023.

For his part, Kelly wrote one of the quirkiest columns in any major American daily, and he acknowledged as much when we spoke. “They gave us software to track our clicks. I just never bothered to use it,” he says.

Kelly wrote frequently about squirrels—their annoying tendency to get into bird feeders and the adorable things they did in the backyards of homes across the region. But Kelly also had a unique eye for the sort of things that others might walk past without a second thought. He excelled at finding out-of-the-ordinary things and reporting their backstories in his column.

“I remember when Jeff Bezos bought the paper, it seemed like, ‘Hey, this is wonderful news’ … and then we had this incredible growth and ramping up of the newsroom and opening hubs,” he tells City Paper. “I remember feeling, wow, this is really ambitious. I wonder if it makes sense economically. Now it looks like we got too big too fast.”

Kelly was also one of the most prolific columnists in the U.S., appearing in the paper almost every day on topics ranging from serious to silly: pandas and grammar to enslavement and water towers.

Dvorak was the most recent addition to the Post’s local columnists. As a young mother raising two boys in Ward 6, she wrote in a way that held strong appeal to families; she also wrote about difficult subjects like homelessness and other social issues with sensitivity. Vargas excelled at writing about social issues, like people with disabilities or poverty.

Vargas and Dvorak did not comment on their plans or confirm anything about the fate of their respective columns. An optimist might argue that letting older writers leave the paper could clear the decks for fresh, young voices able to offer commentary or perspective on topics that are often marginalized. But most Posties interviewed in the past few weeks believe the paper will not replace any local commentary with new voices; that dynamic of the paper’s coverage will simply be part of history.

The paper also lost dozens of well-known bylines like George, Peter Marks, Darryl Fears, Liz Sly, Marc Fisher, Paul Farhi, and many others. It’s notable that many Black journalists are also gone; Milloy and Fears, plus Vanessa Williams, Sydney Trent, and Ovetta Wiggins; it’s unclear what the impact will be across the various departments or for the paper’s overall diversity goals.

The Post Guild, the union that represents 1,000 reporters and noneditorial staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the department by department departures. One former writer says Post management had targets for each team across the newsroom, and that each team was slated for a certain reduction in numbers but could not provide more specifics.

In the final days of December, as one staffer after another made their goodbyes public, the paper announced a tentative agreement with the union following 18 months of tense negotiations. The contract provides for higher starting salaries, raises for everyone, and more union protections.

Gene Meyer, who spent more than 30 years at the Post and joined the picket line in front of the paper’s D.C. headquarters on Dec. 7, says he thinks the buyouts and targeted reductions in the Metro section’s staff is “very disappointing and depressing.” He notes that management eliminated the Post Sunday magazine last winter, did away with dedicated space for local op-eds, and that grammatical errors and other mistakes are far more common in the paper than ever before.

But it’s the loss of local and regional coverage that really stings, especially the columnists and the unique flavor of this region that was reflected in their copy. “It says to me that Bezos’ Post doesn’t care about local D.C.,” Meyer says.

Out of Ink covers media issues relevant to the DMV. Please send tips, suggestions, or feedback to vsmorris@gmail.com and connect with him on X @vincentmorris.

This article has been updated with additional comment from the Post.