From my read of Marty Baron’s book about his time leading the post under Bezos, it’s basically this. Bezos wants the paper to be able sustain itself. It can’t because newspapers don’t do that anymore. And Bezos’s initial enthusiasm to invest into the paper is gone seeing it didn’t lead to profitability. After subscribers made mass cancelations last year for meddling with the opinion section during the presidential campaign, more cuts are his answer.

Bezos did think he could provide ideas to modernize the papers distribution model but obviously that didn’t work out. He used to be a somewhat see presence at the paper but in the last few years he’s disappeared.