The prestigious Washington Post is in crisis, and owner Jeff Bezos is pressuring it to change its money-losing ways.
The Post’s managing editor abruptly resigned; his successor was forced to step down amid criticism, and newspaper columns targeted his boss.
At the center of this storm is the new CEO of “WaPo”, the British William Lewis, who was given a mission by Amazon founder Bezos when he appointed him last autumn.
Lewis was asked to turn around a newspaper that has won Pulitzer Prizes half a century after the Watergate scandal but is projected to lose $77 million by 2023 despite job cuts and the disappearance of a Sunday supplement.
However, the former journalist, who made history by publishing a story on British MPs’ expenses while editor of the Daily Telegraph in the late 2000s, is now finding his position increasingly vulnerable.
Revelations have been mounting over the past few weeks about his role in the illegal phone-tapping scandal perpetrated by tabloid The News of the World nearly 12 years ago while he was working for the Murdoch family’s conservative media group.
On Friday, Lewis was at the focus of an investigation by his own reporters.
According to the Washington Post, he allowed thousands of emails to be destroyed in 2011, raising suspicions that he was destroying evidence, which he denied.
The “Trump Bump”
Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, told AFP that as the US presidential election approaches, the case is poisoning the atmosphere at a long-running newspaper that is “not doing well financially.”
The Post was one of the trusted news outlets that benefited from the turmoil that accompanied Trump’s four-year tenure in the White House, which ended with his defeat to President Joe Biden.
According to the professor, the Post was “seen as a place that provided very hard-hitting, truth-telling coverage about Trump.”
Trump’s departure from the White House meant there were fewer attention-grabbing stories to keep readers engaged.
“When Donald Trump left the White House, that Trump effect, which had been beneficial to a lot of newspapers, disappeared,” Kennedy said.
“And the Post suffered particularly heavy losses.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Post will have 2.5 million subscribers by the end of 2022, compared to 3 million subscribers in early 2021 when Biden took office.
Meanwhile, rival newspaper The New York Times has grown to a subscriber base of more than 10 million, the result of a strategy of delivering hard news while also emphasizing entertaining topics such as sports, food and lifestyle.
US media quoted Lewis as saying he told editorial staff in early June that he “could no longer hide the matter” – the newspaper had lost a lot of money and people had lost interest in its articles.
Third News Team
The day before that editorial meeting, Post reporters received news of editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee’s resignation.
Buzbee was said to have disagreed with Lewis’s strategy of splitting the editorial department into three divisions: news, opinion, and a new third unit devoted to social media and service journalism.
The contours of this “third newsroom” are still vague, but it appears aimed at reviving readership by leaping into uncharted territory for the newspaper.
Within the Murdoch family group, Lewis was the head of The Wall Street Journal (2014-2020), another major newspaper of the American press.
However, articles in The New York Times and The Post pointed to questionable practices during his tenure and those of his former colleague Robert Vinnett, whom Lewis chose to replace Buzbee.
Published allegations include paying informants, using data from hacked phones, or using intermediaries using fake identities to obtain information.
Following these revelations, Winnett withdrew his name from consideration for the position.
Professor Kennedy believes Lewis has no choice but to leave the post, as he has lost the confidence of the team there.
“The body is rejecting blood transfusions,” David Maraniss, a senior reporter at the Post, wrote on his Facebook page. He added that he doesn’t know anyone who thinks the situation can continue.
Kennedy said of Lewis, “If he cannot motivate the staff (…) the Post will be without direction and its best people will leave.”
According to many observers, the outcome of this crisis plays into the hands of billionaire Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million.
So far, Bezos has supported his CEO.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)