WaPo CEO Will Lewis Copping Major Heat and Backlash Following Editor Resignation
After pissing of his newsroom, Lewis has been accused of attempting to block stories about himself from appearing in the paper he leads, and trying to bribe reporters from competitors.
Washington Post CEO Will Lewis addresses his fractured newsroom this past Monday, as interim Executive Editor Matt Murray (seated) looks on.
Since Sally Buzbee quit as Executive Editor of the Washington Post on Sunday evening, CEO Will Lewis can’t catch a break.
The newsroom has been up in arms about the circumstances of the popular Buzbee’s departure, and the new organizational structure Lewis has began implementing. He further tweaked his staff by replacing Buzbee with two of his own past colleagues from outside the organization, and brutally telling them he needed to bring in new blood because “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 anymore.”
In recent days, the New York Times—which appears to have sources close to Buzbee, if not Buzbee herself—revealed Lewis and Buzbee had argued over her descion to run an article about Prince Harry’s phone hacking trial in England, following the judge’s decision on whether the plaintiffs could add Lewis’s name to a list of past-Murdoch media executives who they argued were involved in a plan to conceal evidence of hacking at the newspapers.
Lewis told Buzbee that he didn’t think the story merited coverage, and when she told him they would proceed with it anyway, he said her decision represented a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation.
Buzbee was shaken by the confrontation and confided in her circle of confidants about it, but when the judge ruled on May 21 that Lewis could be added to the case, The Post published an article about the decision. Just over a week later, she quit the paper, after Lewis told her the newsroom would be reorganized and her authority greatly diminished.
Following news of this argument, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik added to the story, saying that when he contacted Lewis in December for a story he was working on about how Lewis was likely to get caught up in the British media case, “Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations.” At the time Lewis made the offer, he had been announced as the incoming CEO of the Post, but had not started yet. Folkenflik appeared to slight fellow media industry reporter Dylan Byers of Puck for appearing to accept a similar offer. Byers published an exclusive interview with Lewis two weeks ago.
It’s been a rough week for Lewis, a veteran media boss. It remains to be seen how he rebuilds his relationship inside and out of the Washington Post.