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Sir Will Lewis, chosen by Jeff Bezos to turn over The Washington Post in 2023, is stepping down as chief executive and publisher, days after the company fired nearly 300 of its nearly 800 journalists.
Lewis was criticized for being absent when the paper’s deepest cuts in recent memory were announced, prompting editor-in-chief Matt Murray to tell staff and the media about the layoffs.
“Now is the right time for me to step down,” Lewis wrote in a note to colleagues. “During my tenure, difficult decisions have been made to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.”
Jeff D’Onofrio, the company’s chief financial officer, will become interim chief executive. In a memo, D’Onofrio said the newspaper was “ending a tough week of change with more change”.
Lewis, a veteran editor and journalist based in Britain’s Fleet Street, this week planned to drastically scale back The Washington Post’s operations, shutting down entire teams like its venerable sports desk to focus on politics and security.
The plans, which would have cut nearly a third of the workforce, faced an outcry from current and former employees. Marty Baron, the Post’s editor-in-chief at the time of Bezos’s $250 million purchase in 2013, described it as “one of the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”
When senior management at the Post learned that Lewis was attending Super Bowl-related festivities in San Francisco at the time of the news of the job cuts, they became angry. This came off as “difficult”, a newsroom source said, adding that “the Super Bowl thing was the last straw”.
“Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl,” the person said.
Bezos said in a statement Saturday that the Post has “an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity.”
D’Onofrio, along with editor-in-chief Murray and opinion editor Adam O’Neill, are “poised to lead The Post into an exciting and thriving next chapter,” he said. Bezos did not mention Lewis in his statement.
Lewis did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Lewis was criticized in the newsroom for not offering words of public support after FBI agents searched a reporter’s home last month, in what was seen as a further escalation of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. “We’re under siege by the FBI and the Pentagon and he’s walled himself off,” the newsroom source said.
The day the job cuts were announced, the feeling that Lewis had lost the newsroom increased. “There was no discussion with them about the purchase,” the person said. “They made no statement. The senior editorial leadership was furious.”
Before joining the Post, Lewis had held several high-profile jobs in the media, including editor of The Daily Telegraph, a senior reporter at the Financial Times, and publisher of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal.
Lewis was brought in to revive the Post’s fortunes. Instead, hundreds of thousands of readers left the title after implementing a series of poorly received restructuring efforts.
In 2024, Post withdrew his endorsement of the US presidential candidate just days before the election. It was reported that 250,000 customers canceled their subscriptions in the days following the move.
Bezos last year overhauled the Post’s opinion section to focus more on “individual liberty and free markets,” leading to the departure of respected opinion editor David Shipley.
