Sir Will Lewis, who was handpicked in 2023 by Jeff Bezos to turn around The Washington Post, is stepping down as chief executive and publisher days after the company fired about 300 of its roughly 800 reporters.
Lewis came under fire for being absent when the deepest cuts at the paper in recent memory were announced, leaving editor-in-chief Matt Murray to explain the lay-offs to staff and the media.
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Senior management at The Post were livid when they discovered Lewis was attending Super Bowl-related festivities in San Francisco around the time of the news of the job cuts. It came off as “callous”, said one person in the newsroom familiar with the situation, adding that “the Super Bowl thing was the last straw”.
“Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl thing,” the person added.
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Lewis was criticised in the newsroom last month for not offering words of public support after a reporter’s home was searched by FBI agents, which was seen as a further escalation of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. “We’re under siege from the FBI and the Pentagon and he just walled himself off,” the newsroom figure said.
The sense that Lewis had lost the newsroom only increased on the day the job cuts were announced. “There was no communication from him about buyouts,” the person added. “He didn’t put out a statement. Senior editorial leadership was furious.”