‘Washington Post’ CEO resigns after going AWOL during massive job cuts

The Washington Post Publisher and Chief Executive Will Lewis announced Saturday evening he would depart after just two years at the paper, a tenure marked by controversy and crisis.

Lewis called his time “two years of transformation” in his resignation note, but it was defined by turbulence rather than a clear path, and it ended with brutal job cuts. The paper’s chief financial officer, Jeff D’Onofrio, will serve as acting CEO.

More than a third of the newsroom was laid off Wednesday after Lewis’ promises of radical innovations failed to staunch several years of annual losses in the tens of millions of dollars. At one point, losses hit $100 million, Lewis told staffers in June 2024 during a rocky newsroom all-staff. The session occurred just five months into his time at the Post. Yet it proved to be his final all-staff meeting.

He was effectively AWOL as the paper’s scope, ambitions and journalism were radically redefined and constricted. Lewis played no visible role in announcing the layoffs in a mandatory Zoom call for the newsroom on Wednesday. Nor did he publicly address the paper’s readers to allay their concerns.

The coup de grace came just a day later when Lewis was photographed in Northern California walking a red carpet at a Super Bowl event.

The newsroom had lost so much faith in Lewis that in recent weeks that journalists appealed directly in letters to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, to spare the paper from cuts and help it find financial stability. Bezos did not respond to those appeals.

As NPR has previously reported, the sports desk was eliminated; the local staff reduced to about a dozen from more than 40; the international desk was decimated. Among the layoffs: the entire Middle East team, the bureau chief and another war correspondent. The latter posted she received the email informing her while she was in a war zone.