Washington Post bombarded with ‘cake’ parties for outgoing staffers

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'Caking' has taken over Washington Post newsroom

Former Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler revealed that "caking" has taken over the newsroom as staffers continue leaving the paper.

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Staffers at The Washington Post are on a sugar high — but not in the way their bosses may have hoped.

Glenn Kessler, The Post's famed Fact Checker, announced his departure last week after more than 27 years at the paper, revealing he had taken a buyout. His last day was July 31. 

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Kessler revealed that his final days at The Post weren’t too somber — thanks to all the "caking."

"It was sugar overload because, you know, the tradition in newspapers is what we call caking, where it is a little celebration with cake served," Kessler told Fox News Digital. 

WASHINGTON POST REELING FROM BUYOUT EXODUS AS BOSSES HOPE TO TURN THE PAGE AT EMBATTLED PAPER

The Washington Post has been bombarded with cake parties in honor of departing staffers, according to the paper's former fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who was honored at one of them.  ( XiXinXing via Getty Images)

Kessler said his colleagues held a "very nice event" for him and shared kind words, including some located in Asia who woke up in the middle of the night and were "beamed in" on Zoom to participate. Kessler previously served as a State Department reporter before becoming the Fact Checker. 

However, he was far from the only outgoing "Postie" being celebrated.  

"But it was literally one caking after another," Kessler said. "I mean, as we walked in for my event, they were packing up the leftover cake from the previous event. And as my wife remarked, as we walked through the newsroom to the place where they were holding my event, there was literally every conference room was filled with a caking, with people celebrating people who were leaving. So it was a very strange sugar high one got on your last day." 

LONGTIME WASHINGTON POST FACT CHECKER TAKES BUYOUT, SAYS PAPER HAS YET TO FIND REPLACEMENT BEFORE EXIT

Kessler let out a belly laugh at the idea that The Post was giving so much business to one lucky bakery in Washington, D.C., as he speculated all the cakes were coming from the same bakery, though he didn't know which one. 

"But the caking is such a newspaper cliché," Kessler said. "I mean, one of my favorite movies is the movie ‘Spotlight,’ which is about The Boston Globe, and it opens with a caking. It was kind of like an inside journalism joke to open with a caking where people were eating this cake and they each have kind of awkward, strange, funny remarks that people make about the person that's leaving."

"So that was the last day. Caking, after caking, after caking, after caking," he added. 

Glenn Kessler, the famed fact-checker at The Washington Post, left the paper after more than 27 years. (Washington Post)

The Washington Post had just concluded a round of buyouts, targeting the most senior staffers. The Post, which has struggled financially in recent years, has had multiple iterations of what it calls the Voluntary Separation Program (VSP). But as Kessler noted in his Substack piece shedding light on what led to his departure, this was going to be the "last buyout," according to what a senior editor told him, and that any necessary staff reductions in the future would be layoffs. 

But not everyone who has left The Post in recent months was for a buyout. Many landed jobs at other news outlets while others resigned in protest over decisions made by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. Bezos sparked newsroom turmoil last October when he pulled The Post's forthcoming endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris just days before the presidential election. He fueled further consternation in February by launching a new mission for the editorial pages to promote "personal liberties and free markets" and vowing not to publish pieces opposing those principles. 

The Post has lost a significant portion of its biggest talent and high-profile journalists over the past year, Kessler being among them. However, some departures were more painful for the newsroom. 

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There has been an exodus of high-profile talent at The Washington Post over the past year.  (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Kessler cited a trio of top editors who announced their exits within a two-month span that took the biggest hit on newsroom morale; Matea Gold, The Post's managing editor who was poached by The New York Times to become its Washington editor, Philip Rucker, The Post's national editor who joined CNN as its senior vice president of editorial strategy and news, and Griff Witte, The Post's democracy editor who became The Atlantic's managing editor.

Gold, in particular, Kessler noted, was the one who"everyone thought should have been editor" of The Post.

"Those three were the future leaders of The Washington Post," Kessler said. "You could imagine any one of them running the newspaper at one point. And the fact that they all left? That was devastating."

A spokesperson for The Washington Post declined to comment. 

Fox News' Annie McCuen contributed to this report. 

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