The departing chief executive of The Washington Post didn’t bother thanking—or even mentioning—his staff in his curt resignation letter.
Will Lewis, the embattled CEO and publisher of the Post, made no mention in the departing message Saturday of the journalists who remained at the institution—or those who had just been shown the door just three days earlier when the company laid off roughly 30 percent of its staff.
He expressed gratitude to exactly one person: Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, the Post’s widely criticized owner.
“I want to thank Jeff Bezos for his support and leadership throughout my tenure as CEO and Publisher,” the Rupert Murdoch media veteran wrote in a memo shared by Post reporter Matt Viser on X. “The institution could not have a better owner.”
Lewis, who did not attend Wednesday’s conference call informing staff of the cuts, nevertheless defended the decision to cull employees in his memo. “During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news to millions of customers each day,” he wrote.
Since Bezos appointed him in 2023, Lewis oversaw the exodus of hundreds of thousands of subscribers following the killing of 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.
A day before his two-paragraph memo, the media executive was slammed for walking the red carpet at the NFL Honors ceremony in San Francisco—days after the Post’s sports department was eliminated in the sweeping layoffs.
For his part, Bezos, who is reportedly worth more than $224 billion, struck an upbeat tone following Lewis’s departure.
“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos wrote in a statement on Saturday. “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.
Former and current Post staffers had harsher words.
Jada Yuan, a longtime culture writer laid off in last week’s purge, wrote on X that she had “never been more thrilled with a news alert,” adding that Lewis “couldn’t even show up on Zoom to lay off one-third of the company.”
Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post Guild, told The New York Times she was glad Lewis was gone, though she said the damage had already been done.
“Will Lewis’s legacy (already pretty bleak to begin with) will be having enabled Bezos to tank an American institution,” one laid-off employee told The Guardian. “And he wasn’t even brave enough to face his staffers more than once in his tenure at The Post. Embarrassing to say the least.”
Ahead of his short-lived tenure at the Post, Lewis’s career in British media spanned decades, first for Murdoch’s Sunday Times, then as an editor at the Telegraph Group, where he gained the nickname “Thirsty Will” and was fond of late-night karaoke with colleagues.
He later moved to the U.S. to oversee Murdoch’s Dow Jones group, which includes the Wall Street Journal, but left to rush to the aid of fallen British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His political advice later earned him a knighthood, and Bezos appointed him CEO of the Washington Post. He lives in a Georgetown house with a swimming pool.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Washington Post for comment.
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