The brand new 12 months has already grow to be a tough one for The Washington Submit as its years-long identification disaster and monetary struggles proceed to plague the Jeff Bezos-owned paper forward of the second Trump presidency.
Whereas newsroom tensions and cash woes have been persistent, they have been taken to new heights following Bezos’ appointment of Will Lewis as The Submit’s writer and CEO.
Tasked to revitalize the paper’s cratering enterprise mannequin, Lewis had some alternative phrases for his workers in a June 2024 assembly following the ousting of its government editor Sally Buzbee.
“We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff … I can’t sugarcoat it anymore,” Lewis stated on the time.
Quick-forward to 2025, and Lewis has alienated himself from his newsroom.
“The company feels rudderless right now,” one staffer instructed Fox Information Digital.
“Will Lewis has basically disappeared since his infamous ‘no one’s reading your stuff’ meeting from last year, he hasn’t named a permanent executive editor, if he has a business plan, he hasn’t communicated it to his employees, or the public, or to anyone, it seems, except [Puck reporter] Dylan Byers… with no clarity on when and in what direction the company is headed.”
The staffer fumed whereas speculating that Lewis had been the supply of the reporting of Puck’s Dylan Byers, telling Fox Information Digital “that’s apparently how Lewis prefers to communicate with his staff.”
“In the last six months, maybe more, we have heard from Will Lewis exactly once — in his bizarrely passive-aggressive email after the election announcing the return to office mandate,” the staffer stated.
Final summer season, Lewis appointed former Wall Road Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray as performing government editor till a everlasting alternative for Buzbee was discovered.
However an exhaustive search has resulted in nobody taking the place, leaving Lewis to nominate Murray as the brand new everlasting government editor, in keeping with a current report from Byers.
Lewis’ blunt feedback could have irked his workers, however Bezos’ determination to halt The Submit’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris simply days earlier than the election sparked a firestorm not simply within the newsroom however amongst readers as properly.
The Submit was already on tempo to lose a staggering $77 million by the top of the 12 months, however that hit doesn’t even account for the whopping 250,000 individuals who reportedly canceled their subscriptions because of the non-endorsement.
Many critics, each inside and out of doors of the paper, interpreted Bezos’ determination as appeasement to then-candidate and now-President-elect Donald Trump.
Paul Farhi, a former media author for The Washington Submit who left in 2023 because of company-wide mass buyouts, referred to as Bezos’ transfer the “single most disastrous” administration determination within the paper’s historical past.
“The morale is very low, of course,” Farhi instructed Fox Information Digital. “Issues could be not nice if the paper had administration that had made all the correct strikes.
But it surely strikes me that they’ve made a collection of horrible strikes in response to deteriorating, bigger financial circumstances, which have made issues quite a bit worse.”
Posties stay alarmed by the exodus of expertise in current weeks “with no apparent effort to stop the bleeding,” present staffers have stated.
The non-endorsement led to the resignations of editor-at-large Robert Kagan and a number of editorial board members.
Within the weeks since, a number of high-profile staffers have introduced departures for different retailers, together with reporters Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Tyler Web page and LeeAnn Caldwell, columnist Charles Lane and veteran editor Matea Gold.
Fox Information Digital additionally discovered that The Submit’s well being and science editor Stephen Smith is leaving for The New York Instances.
Farhi referred to as the departures a “vote of no confidence” in writer Will Lewis.
“These departures are in reflection a vote of no confidence in him and the management of the paper,” he stated.
“You know, politics isn’t the only thing the Washington Post does, but it’s a big part of the franchise. And when you’re losing the core, you know, some of the best people who you’ve developed over the years to be the part of that franchise, it’s really demoralizing and really undermines the overall enterprise. You know, they’ll hire back. They’ll find people. Will they be as good? That’s a big question.”
What may be fueling the exits is the ideological battle that seems to be taking form inside The Submit. As Semafor’s Ben Smith lately wrote, many workers have been “sold” on the concept that The Submit’s mission was to be a “#Resistance newspaper.”
Nonetheless, Bezos himself alluded to creating reforms on the paper in an op-ed defending his endorsement determination.
“Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose,” the Amazon founder wrote in October.
“Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”
Bezos, like a number of billionaires in Silicon Valley, has prolonged olive branches to President-elect Trump since his victory.
Bezos met with him at Mar-a-Lago final month and donated $1 million to his inaugural fund. Amazon Prime additionally introduced this week it is going to be producing a documentary giving an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes look” at First Woman Melania Trump, which might be launched globally each in theaters and in streaming.
The Submit’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes mocked Bezos depicting him and others groveling at Trump’s toes in a cartoon that editors refused to publish. She resigned in protest final week.
The Washington Submit’s in-house media critic Erik Wemple spoke out towards a brand new coverage applied by Murray, who stated the paper shouldn’t cowl itself when requested in regards to the lack of protection of Telnaes’ resignation.
“I couldn’t possibly dissent more strongly from that policy,” Wemple reacted on Monday.
“The Post’s willingness over the years to cover its slip-ups and scandals has helped to set it apart from the many news organizations that refuse to hold themselves to the same rules to which they hold politicians, CEOs, professional athletes, etc. And it’s something, I believe, that subscribers have appreciated.”
Along with the current newsroom drama, The Washington Submit applied layoffs this week, impacting about 4% of your entire firm, concentrating on its enterprise divisions whereas its journalists have been spared.
Regardless of their private dismay on the present state of the paper, two Posties inform Fox Information Digital they aren’t seeking to depart.
“I’d like to try to ride it through,” one stated. “I love the company, love the people I work with and for.”
The staffer urged Lewis to “treat his employees like adults.”
“Tell us his vision for the company, explain his path for us to get there, and hire a talented and inspirational executive editor to take us there. Do your job. Stop letting the company drift into obsolescence and stem the bleeding of talent,” they stated.
One former staffer slammed the “self-inflicted” injury being finished by their once-beloved employer.
“It’s very sad to see how quickly everything that was built has been dismantled,” the veteran ex-Postie stated.
The previous staffer referred to as out Lewis and Murray, insisting “neither is willing to take a stand” towards Bezos. They took a swipe at Murray’s new coverage on Submit journalists not protecting itself, predicting the coverage will quickly apply to not protecting Amazon as properly.
“It’s truly tragic,” they stated.
The Washington Submit didn’t instantly reply to Fox Information Digital’s request for remark.
Fox Information’ David Rutz contributed to this report.
