Washington Post to start reopening newsroom in July

The Washington Post is planning to start reopening its newsroom in July, almost 16 months after directing employees to work remotely during the pandemic.

Publisher Fred Ryan told staff on Wednesday that workers 10 percent of the workforce will start returning to the office on July 6, with everyone else back “sometime this fall,” according to a tweet by Mike Madden, a deputy editor at the newspaper.

The Washington Post will start returning to the office on July 6, with 10 percent of employees, and then get everyone back in by “sometime this fall,” publisher Fred Ryan tells us.

— Mike Madden (@MikeMadden) March 10, 2021

Madden said Ryan made the announcement during an all-staff meeting.

Ryan shared details of the plan in a staff memo, obtained by CNN reporter Oliver Darcy.

WaPo publisher Fred Ryan emails staff about the paper’s plan to “initiate the gradual return” to offices starting July 6.

“This will inevitably be a complicated process…” pic.twitter.com/uWqM489Vru

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) March 10, 2021

“We will initiate the gradual return to our Washington headquarters beginning on Tuesday, July 6, starting with approximately 10% of our overall workforce,” Ryan wrote in the memo. 

After that, he added, the company will scale up in-person staff “as safety” permits, with the goal of all employees returning at some point in the fall. Anyone who wants to return to the office is expected to have “received their full doses of the COVID-19 vaccine,” Ryan added.

The Hill has reached out to the Post for comment.

A Washington Post staffer who attended the town hall, which Ryan hosted from his office at the Post’s headquarters, said few details were offered about how decisions will be made about who will return to the office when.

The Post first directed staffers to work from home on March 11 last year. Since then, Ryan wrote in Wednesday’s memo, the paper has had to operate “in ways that it has never been required to do in its 143-year history.”

The newspaper plans to add more than 150 jobs this year, bringing newsroom headcount to a record 1,000-plus employees, according to a December announcement.

During Wednesday’s town hall, Ryan also updated employees on the search to succeed former executive editor Marty Baron, who retired at the end of February.

The “wide-ranging search includes ‘diverse’ group from ‘global publication,” Post columnist Margaret Sullivan tweeted.

Fred Ryan also gives update on search for successor to @PostBaron as executive editor. Wide-ranging search includes ‘diverse’ group from ‘global publications’; internal & external candidates; no timetable

— ☀️ Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) March 10, 2021

Updated at 2:12 p.m.