Media

Washington Post CEO resigns, leaving no clear strategy

It’s easy to forget that Sir Will Lewis’s arrival at the Washington Post in late 2023 provoked cautious optimism: He was an ex-journalist who charmed the newsroom. He was also a source of chaotic, but fresh, energy.

He arrived after years of genteel decline at a newspaper that could go one of two ways: It could be a collapsing metro paper like the Chicago Tribune; or a global powerhouse like the New York Times.

Lewis, who resigned Saturday after overseeing deep cuts to the newsroom, lost his footing over two errors, one of his and one of owner Jeff Bezos’s: First, Lewis blocked the Post reporting on his role in the UK phone hacking scandal, preventing the publication of a story few would have read anyway. Then, Bezos pulled a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris at the 11th hour, for apparent fear of offending Donald Trump. That endorsement wouldn’t have made much of a difference politically, but hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled over what they saw as a craven capitulation.

Lewis’s short resignation note, and the lack of a permanent succession plan suggests his departure wasn’t on schedule. Internal frustration had peaked after he skipped a virtual meeting to discuss layoffs, but was then photographed at a Super Bowl party. (“In a normal world it was a fireable offense. Glad it was in this world too,” one Post staffer told me, though the details of Lewis’s departure aren’t immediately clear.)

Now the Post has squandered two precious years throwing around buzzword-filled plans few understood, like the comical, unrealized “third newsroom.” CFO Jeff D’Onofrio, an accountant who had big jobs at Major League Baseball, Tumblr, and Yahoo!, will step in as acting CEO. He sent a short memo Saturday that suggested the paper will be starting from scratch, again, on a “renewed commitment to building a sustainable business.” Journalists who spent their careers defending the brand may not be heartened to learn that “consumer data will drive our decisions, sharpening our edge in delivering what is most valuable to our audiences.”

The tragedy of the Post is that its greatest days have always come from the business that’s right there in the name: Washington. The US Capital is the best story in the world, and also the commercial home to some of the only enduring news startups of the last decade: Politico, then Axios and Punchbowl, and to a degree Semafor. At some point, the Post’s business side will have to return home to challenge those, but its roving identity crisis has come at an enormous cost.