Will Lewis steps down as Washington Post CEO days after mass layoffs
Former Washington Post chief executive officer and publisher Will Lewis resigned from his position, days after mass layoffs and department closures were announced at the newspaper.
Lewis said in a statement that he stepped down “to ensure the sustainable future of The Post,” The New York Times reported, noting that he only mentioned Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post’s owner but not its journalists.
Lewis’ tenure was marked with financial losses and controversy — the most recent of which was the laying of hundreds of people.
Now, Jeff D’Onofrio, previously the Post’s Chief Financial Officer, will take over as publisher and CEO.
“The Post’s resolute commitment to writing the first rough draft of history anchors and imprints its future,” D’Onofrio, who’s had other roles at Raptive, Tumblr, Yahoo and Google, said in a statement. “I am honored to become part of charting that future and to take the lead in securing both the legacy and business of this fierce, storied American institution.”
In the days before Lewis’ departure, he was photographed at a Super Bowl event in San Francisco, shortly after the mass layoffs were announced. This move sparked criticism, especially as Washington Post staff members noted Lewis wasn’t present for the call announcing the workforce reduction. Instead, executive editor Matt Murray delivered the news.
Murray said during that call that the reduction was about “positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives, and what is becoming a more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape, and after some years when, candidly, the Post has had struggles to do that.”
The Post, Murray said, lost too much money over the years.
“We must work together to become nimbler, and to find new ways of working and innovating to understand what our customers want more of and what they want less of,” Murray said, noting every department will feel the effects.
Changes to The Post include the shuttering of the sports department, though it plans to retain several reporters to join featured and cover sports; the dismantling of its book section; suspension of the Post Reports podcast; as well as the slashing of its international footprint and metro section.
At the end of the day, The Post will focus more on national news, politics, business and health, Murray said.
Financial losses and controversy
Bezos hired Lewis in 2024. He began his career in Britain as a reporter, eventually becoming the chief executive officer of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal’s publisher.
However, NPR and other outlets reported shortly before Lewis started at The Washington Post that plaintiffs suing Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids argued that Lewis was part of an effort to hide evidence of criminality at the papers. These civil suits accused Lewis of protecting Murdoch’s top executives.
According to NPR, Lewis pressured the outlet not to publish their story on him — and told then-WP executive editor Sally Buzzbee not to let staff report on it either. This disagreement led to her leaving the newspaper. After this, he tried to hire a British journalist, his former colleague Robert Winnett, though this was unsuccessful after questions came up about Lewis’ and Winnett’s conduct in a phone-hacking scandal.
“Will Lewis’s exit is long overdue. His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution. But it’s not too late to save The Post,” the Washington Post Guild said Saturday. “Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
