Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. In early February, the Washington Post made the shocking decision to lay off nearly half its newsroom (more than the third that the Post originally acknowledged), including reporters covering race, ethnicity, and communities of color. Half of the Post’s unionized members who identify as Hispanic or Latino were let go, according to the Washington Post Newspaper Guild, along with 45 percent of Black members and 43 percent of Asian members. By comparison, just 37 percent of white guild members lost their jobs. “When these layoffs took place, and I saw the gravity, and then I saw some of the names—including myself—diversity was the first thing on my mind, like ‘God, this is going to be really bad,’ because the numbers were already trending in the wrong direction,” Michael Brice-Saddler, an outgoing metro reporter, who is Black, told me.…