The Washington Post has informed Monumental Sports, the owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards, and Mystics, that it will no longer send reporters on the road to cover its teams, according to Puck’s John Ourand.
Just last week, the Post abruptly canceled plans to send reporters to the Winter Olympics after already spending more than $80,000 on housing, only to reverse course this past Monday following internal backlash and public scrutiny, ultimately sending a reduced team of four reporters to Milan and Cortina. Additionally, Nationals beat writers Spencer Nusbaum and Andrew Golden were told not to book travel for spring training.
Now, road coverage for three more local teams is gone.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Newspapers and other sports media outlets have been pulling reporters off the road since the COVID-19 pandemic. But the Post’s version is unfolding faster and more dramatically than most, fueled by sustained financial losses, subscriber cancellations following Jeff Bezos’ decision to block the paper’s 2024 presidential endorsement, and growing speculation that the entire sports desk could eventually be shuttered.
Ourand’s Puck colleague Dylan Byers reported over the weekend that fear is growing internally that the sports section could be eliminated altogether. Since then, media reporter Paul Farhi — who freelances for the Post — reported that impending cuts could reach as many as 300 positions.
Clarification/modification/correction here: Newsroom folks now saying impending cuts will be very large—up to 300 people—and will fall most heavily on sports and foreign staff. But cuts *will* include non-newsroom (ie., business) personnel, too. So pain all around. https://t.co/YnWBoBgbUf
— Paul Farhi (@farhip) January 26, 2026
It’s not clear how the Post expects to cover these teams without sending reporters on the road. The paper could rely heavily on local coverage, use stringers in other cities, or simply accept that its sports section will look more like a wire service than a regional newspaper.
Whatever solution the Post lands on, it pretty much amounts to an acceptance that any meaningful beat coverage is no longer the priority.
