Will Lewis stepped down Saturday as CEO and publisher of the Washington Post following a rocky two-year tenure and amid widespread criticism for failing to address staff Wednesday as the company laid off a third of its employees, including more than 300 journalists.
“After two years of transformation at The Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” Lewis wrote to staff in a memo. “I want to thank Jeff Bezos for his support and leadership throughout my tenure as CEO and Publisher. The institution could not have a better owner.”
The paper’s chief financial officer, Jeff D’Onofrio, has been named interim CEO and publisher. D’Onofrio, a former chief executive at Tumblr, joined the paper last June.
In his first statement since last week’s layoffs, Bezos said the Post “has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity” and that the paper would be well served by D’Onofrio, executive editor Matt Murray and opinion editor Adam O’Neal. He did not mention Lewis.
“Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus,” Bezos added. “Jeff, along with Matt and Adam, are positioned to lead The Post into an exciting and thriving next chapter.”
Murray announced the widespread layoffs — which saw the sports and books sections cut and the gutting of the foreign, metro and arts sections — in an early-morning Zoom call on Wednesday. Lewis did not participate in the Zoom call as he had “a lot of things to tend to,” Murray told Fox News on Wednesday.
However, Athletic reporter and Post sports alum Nicki Jhabvala posted a photo of Lewis at Thursday’s NFL Honors award show in San Francisco ahead of the Super Bowl. The photo drew widespread criticism from current and former Post staffers.
Lewis’ arrival in 2024 followed the Post having gone through rounds of layoffs, buyouts and clashes between management and the paper’s union, and as the paper reportedly lost $100 million the previous year.
A former Rupert Murdoch executive who served as the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Lewis told the Post’s media team in an interview after his hiring announcement that the paper would “grow again” and “get that confidence back and that swagger back.”
But his two-year tenure was marred by controversy. Lewis said in June 2024 that then-executive editor Sally Buzbee would leave the paper, weeks after he reportedly spoke to her about the paper’s coverage of a lawsuit involving his alleged role in covering up a phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch’s U.K. papers. (Lewis has long denied the allegations.) Lewis also promised an exclusive interview with NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik if he dropped a story on the allegations. Folkenflik declined, and Lewis then claimed to the Post that Folkenflik was more “an activist, not a journalist.”
Lewis then appointed Murray as interim executive editor ahead of the 2024 election, after which former Telegraph editor and Lewis colleague Robert Winnett would replace him. Murray would then transition to lead a “third newsroom” focused on social media and service journalism, one of Lewis’ signature ideas to try and boost the paper’s financial prospects. But Winnett decided not to join the paper after media coverage, including some by the Post’s media desk, scrutinized his ethical practices as a U.K. journalist.
Many of his plans to boost the paper’s finances never took off. The paper laid off roughly 100 business staffers last year and instituted another round of buyouts, and the third newsroom, later named “WP Ventures,” did not gain much traction. Several top reporters, editors and executives — including the head of WP Ventures — also took buyouts or left for jobs at the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Journal, among other organizations.
Lewis got off on the wrong foot with Post employees, telling them that “people are not reading your stuff.” After Winnett withdrew from joining the Post, Lewis went into what multiple staffers told the New Yorker was “a state of hiding.”
Multiple Post staffers who spoke to TheWrap celebrated Lewis’ departure, with one saying it was “really great he finally left.”
“It leaves some small hope that we’ve hit rock bottom,” another Post staffer said. “But I’ve thought that before.”
The Post Guild, the paper’s union, said in a statement that Lewis’ departure was “long overdue” and accused him of “the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution.”
“It’s not too late to save The Post,” it said. “Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”
D’Onofrio acknowledged the “hard week of change” at the paper in a note to staffers on Saturday, and he said the paper under his leadership would pair its “uncompromising, fearless journalism” with “building a sustainable business.”
“I’m honored to take the helm as acting Publisher and CEO to lead us into a sustainable, successful future with the strength of our journalism as our north star,” D’Onofrio wrote. “I look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with all of you to make that happen.”
Michael Calderone contributed to this report.
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