Will Lewis is out as CEO and publisher of The Washington Post after two tumultuous years marked by layoffs, restructuring, and newsroom revolt.
Lewis stepped down on Saturday, days after the paper slashed roughly 30 percent of its staff, gutting more than 300 journalism jobs. In an internal email obtained by The New York Times, Lewis said he was leaving “to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.”
Owner Jeff Bezos praised the paper’s “essential journalistic mission,” while signaling that a leadership reset is already underway. Former CFO Jeff D’Onofrio will take over as interim CEO.
The backlash was immediate—and unusually blunt.
Former and recently laid-off Washington Post journalists celebrated Lewis’s exit as long overdue, blasting what they described as an absentee publisher who presided over historic cuts without taking responsibility.
Jada Yuan, a longtime culture writer laid off in last week’s purge, wrote on X that she had “never been more thrilled with a news alert,” adding that Lewis “couldn’t even show up on Zoom to lay off one-third of the company.”
Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post Guild, told The New York Times she was glad Lewis was gone but that the damage is already done.
“I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends,” she said.
Lewis, a Rupert Murdoch media veteran hired by Bezos in early 2024 to reverse the paper’s financial slide, defended the layoffs in his farewell message as necessary for long-term survival.
His tenure, however, was dogged by controversy, including internal clashes over coverage of phone-hacking litigation tied to his time in the British press—disputes that preceded the abrupt resignation of former executive editor Sally Buzbee.
Bezos, for his part, avoided any direct assessment of Lewis’s record, instead reiterating faith in the Post’s mission and its remaining leadership.
But for a paper still hemorrhaging talent, trust, and institutional memory, the question now isn’t who takes the helm next. It’s whether the damage can be undone at all.
