Before the Post’s sweeping layoffs and Lewis’s abrupt resignation, his tenure was marked by controversy and clashes with staff
S
tanding on the seventh floor in the center of the Washington Post’s open newsroom on the morning of 3 June 2024, publisher Will Lewis decided to deliver some tough love to a news organization he had taken charge of five months earlier.
Lewis, a veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, had replaced Fred Ryan, a former Ronald Reagan aide who had presided over some of the Post’s profitable years – during the first Trump administration – but lost the confidence of some staffers after clashing with employees during a late 2022 town hall.
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it: it needs turning around, right?” Lewis said. “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 any more. So I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path.”
