Jeff Bezos has pushed out Washington Post chief executive Will Lewis after just over two years in the role, following a wave of newsroom layoffs and growing frustration over the paper’s strategic direction. According to the Financial Times, Lewis announced his departure in an abrupt email on Saturday night, only days after hundreds of journalists were laid off and hours after he was seen attending a Super Bowl event that infuriated staff.
The timing proved decisive. People familiar with the situation told the Financial Times that Lewis’s public appearance at a high-profile sporting event, while the newsroom was reeling from job cuts, was the final misstep for Bezos. It capped a turbulent tenure marked by stalled growth, internal upheaval and editorial decisions that alienated core readers of the paper. Lewis had reportedly told colleagues earlier in the week that he expected to survive the backlash from the cuts and lead the Post into recovery.
Inside the newsroom, his exit was met with little sympathy. Journalists described widespread anger over his leadership style and growing detachment from staff. One current Post journalist told the Financial Times that a photo of Lewis at the Super Bowl “enraged everyone all the way up to the masthead”. While many were relieved to see him go, there was also deep anxiety about what comes next, with fears that a successor could impose even harsher changes.
Marty Baron, the former executive editor who led the Post through its celebrated Trump-era investigations, was blunt in his assessment. Speaking to the Financial Times, Baron said Lewis “needed to go”, describing him as a poor manager, ineffective leader and “inept as an innovator”. Despite continuing to win Pulitzer prizes, the paper has reportedly been losing as much as $100 million a year under Lewis’s watch.
Bezos hired Lewis in 2023 hoping his Fleet Street background and experience at titles including The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times would help revive the Post. Instead, his tenure was dogged by controversy, including renewed scrutiny of his past at Rupert Murdoch’s companies and resistance to his plan to create a separate “third newsroom” focused on AI and new formats. Tensions escalated after the resignation of executive editor Sally Buzbee and Lewis’s remarks to staff suggesting readers “aren’t reading your stuff”.
The deep job cuts announced last week were intended to put the Post on track to break even this year and potentially unlock further investment from Bezos, according to people familiar with the plans cited by the Financial Times. Oversight of that effort now falls to interim chief executive Jeff D’Onofrio, the paper’s chief financial officer, whose background is in technology and digital advertising rather than journalism. While some staff see him as more serious than Lewis, others fear his financial focus could lead to further erosion of coverage.
In a brief message to staff after Lewis’s exit, Bezos said that “data tells us what is valuable and where to focus”, offering no indication of a strategic shift. D’Onofrio echoed that sentiment in a memo stressing that customer data would guide decisions. Baron dismissed both statements in comments to the Financial Times, saying they lacked vision and treated metrics as an end rather than a tool.
Audience numbers at the Post have reportedly halved over the past five years, while costs have risen sharply. Senior executives now hope to rebuild a leaner organisation centred on national politics and security, relying more heavily on freelancers for international coverage after closing many overseas bureaus.
Bezos has become increasingly hands-on as losses have mounted, backing decisions that reshaped the opinion section, scrapped the paper’s 2024 presidential endorsement and coincided with a sharp fall in subscriptions. Though those choices were closely associated with Bezos, it was Lewis who carried them internally. With his departure, he now joins hundreds of former colleagues searching for work, as the Washington Post enters another uncertain chapter.
