The Washington Post’s former CEO once offered a pitch for staff cuts so off the mark that even the paper’s billionaire owner couldn’t get on board.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos was apparently “confounded” by Will Lewis’s broader strategies to make the Washington Post profitable, including a plan to make significant staff reductions, Status reported Wednesday. Lewis is out at the paper a few years after Bezos appointed him CEO and publisher of the legacy newsroom.
Lewis, 56, made a hasty exit from the Post on Saturday—just three days after the company laid off roughly 30 percent of its staff. The Amazon founder reportedly reached his breaking point with his chief executive after a red-cheeked Lewis was seen strutting down a red carpet the day after the newsroom was gutted.
But the billionaire’s frustration with his chosen leader reportedly began before Lewis was spotted at Super Bowl red carpet events.
Bezos, 62, was reportedly displeased with an outline of proposed newsroom cuts that Lewis presented last fall. Some insiders viewed it as Bezos starting to lose faith in the Rupert Murdoch media veteran. Bezos rejected Lewis’s proposal, and the clash delayed layoffs that ultimately cut roughly 300 journalists from December to last week.
After the rejection, the British executive enlisted the Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, to help identify newsroom cuts, according to Status.
Lewis also relied on Murray to deliver the news of the layoffs. He did not attend the Feb. 5 conference call informing staff or publicly address the layoffs—a decision that reportedly infuriated staff and leadership.
But Lewis reached a point of no return after a viral video showed him walking the red carpet at the NFL Honors ceremony in San Francisco—shortly after the Post eliminated its entire sports department.
“Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl thing,” one newsroom insider told the Financial Times. Others confirmed it was Bezos’s “last straw.”
Still, Lewis stopped to kiss the ring on his way out. While the media veteran did not thank—or even mention—his staff in his curt resignation letter, he did express gratitude to the Post’s widely criticized owner, who is reportedly worth more than $224 billion.
“I want to thank Jeff Bezos for his support and leadership throughout my tenure as CEO and Publisher,” Lewis wrote in a two-paragraph memo shared by Post reporter Matt Viser on X. “The institution could not have a better owner.”
Publicly, Bezos took Lewis’s departure in stride. “The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos, who purchased the Post for $250 million, wrote in a statement Saturday that did not name Lewis.
“Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus,” he added.
Lewis appears to have a history of prioritizing high-profile titles and events. He oversaw Murdoch’s Dow Jones group, which includes The Wall Street Journal, before leaving to assist then–British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—a move that later earned him a knighthood.
Before his rocky tenure at the Post began in January 2024, Lewis’s career in British media spanned decades, from Murdoch’s Sunday Times to the Telegraph Group, where he earned the nickname “Thirsty Will” and developed a reputation for late-night karaoke with colleagues.
At the Post, Lewis presided over the exodus of hundreds of thousands of subscribers following the decision to cut a presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris, the resignation of top reporters and editors, and internal clashes over coverage of phone-hacking litigation tied to his time in the British press—disputes that preceded the abrupt resignation of former executive editor Sally Buzbee.
For his part, Bezos has remained largely silent about the Post’s future as he continues to cozy up to Donald Trump. Last month, he reportedly rejected an offer from Washington City Paper owner Mark Ein to buy the Post’s sports and local desks following reports in late January that the paper was contemplating their elimination.
The Daily Beast has reached out to The Washington Post for comment and to Will Lewis via LinkedIn.
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