Washington Post publisher Will Lewis says he’s stepping down, days after big layoffs

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis announced his resignation Saturday, ending a difficult tenure, three days after the newspaper announced it was laying off a third of its staff.

Lewis announced his departure in a two-paragraph email to the newspaper’s staff, saying that after two years of transformation, “the time has come for me to step aside.” The Post’s chief financial officer, Jeff D’Onofrio, was named temporary publisher.

Neither Lewis nor the newspaper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos attended the meeting with staffers announcing the layoffs on Wednesday. Although expected, the cuts were deeper than expected, leading to the closure of the Post’s popular sports section, the elimination of its photography staff and steep reductions in staff responsible for covering the Washington metro area and abroad.

They added to widespread talent defections in recent years at the paper, which lost tens of thousands of subscribers following Bezos’s order at the end of the 2024 presidential campaign to abandon his planned support of Kamala Harris and the subsequent reorientation of its opinion section in a more conservative direction.

Martin Baron, the Post’s first editor-in-chief under Bezos, this week condemned his former boss for trying to curry favor with President Donald Trump and called what happened at the paper a “case study of near-instant self-inflicted brand destruction.”

The British-born Lewis was a former Wall Street Journal executive before taking over as CEO of the Post in January 2024. His tenure has been rocky from the start, marked by layoffs and a failed reorganization plan that led to the departure of former editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee.

His original choice to succeed Buzbee, Robert Winnett, withdrew from the position after ethical questions were raised about his and Lewis’ actions while working in England. These include paying for news that produced major stories, actions that would be considered unethical in American journalism. The current editor-in-chief, Matt Murray, took over shortly after.

Lewis endeared himself to Washington Post journalists by speaking frankly about their work, at one point telling a staff meeting that they had to make changes because few people read their work.

This week’s layoffs have led Bezos to either increase his investment in The Post or sell it to someone who will take a more active role. Lewis, in his memo, praised Bezos: “The institution could not have had a better owner,” he said.

“During my tenure, difficult decisions were made to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so that it can, for many years to come, publish high-quality, nonpartisan news to millions of customers every day,” Lewis said.

The Washington Post Guild, the union representing staffers, said Lewis’ departure was long overdue.

“His legacy will be an attempted destruction of a great American journalistic institution,” the Guild said in a statement. “But it is not too late to save The Post. Jeff Bezos must immediately reverse these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”

Bezos did not mention Lewis in a statement saying D’Onofrio and his team are positioned to lead The Post into “an exciting and thriving next chapter.”

“The Post has a critical journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos said. “Every day, our readers give us a roadmap to success. Data tells us what’s valuable and what to focus on.”

D’Onofrio, who joined the paper last June after working at Raptive, Google, Zagat and Major League Baseball, said in a memo to staff that “we are ending a tough week of change with even more change.”

“This is a difficult time for all media organizations, and The Post is unfortunately no exception,” he wrote. “I have had the privilege of helping chart the path of disruptors and cultural pillars. All have faced economic headwinds in changing industry landscapes, and we have risen to meet these times. I am confident we will get through this, together.”

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David Bauder writes for the AP about the intersection of media and entertainment. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.