Will Lewis, publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post, announced Saturday evening that he is leaving after two tumultuous years marked by sweeping cuts and internal controversy. Jeff D’Onofrio, the paper’s chief financial officer, will serve as acting CEO.
More than a third of the newsroom was laid off on Wednesday as the company moved to curb several years of heavy losses. Lewis had told staff in June 2024 that losses had at one point reached $100 million. His tenure was billed as a period of “transformation,” but staff and observers characterized it as turbulent and divisive.
Lewis did not play a visible role in the layoffs: he was not present in the mandatory Zoom call announcing the cuts and made no public statement to readers at the time. The absence drew sharp criticism when, a day later, he was photographed on a Northern California red carpet at a Super Bowl-related event, fueling anger among journalists and staff.
The layoffs decimated key areas of coverage. NPR reported that the sports desk was eliminated, the local news staff was reduced from more than 40 to about a dozen, and the international desk was slashed — including the entire Middle East team and the Ukraine bureau chief. One correspondent said she received her layoff notice by email while in a war zone. Executive Editor Matt Murray told staff the paper hopes to retain a “presence” in about 12 global locations, likely relying heavily on local stringers; the newsroom is expected to be roughly 500 people going forward. Murray said the editorial focus will narrow to U.S. politics, national security, health and other topics that draw strong reader interest.
In recent weeks, newsroom morale had eroded to the point that journalists sent letters directly to owner Jeff Bezos, asking him to spare colleagues and stabilize the paper’s finances; those appeals reportedly went unanswered. Bezos issued a statement Saturday promising an “exciting and thriving next chapter” and stressing that reader data should guide priorities. D’Onofrio, named in the same release as the new CEO and publisher, pledged to “secure both the legacy and business” of the institution.
Lewis’s arrival at The Post followed a career that included leading The Wall Street Journal as publisher and CEO and work for Rupert Murdoch’s organizations in Britain and the U.S. He was seen as someone who could drive financial discipline and manage contentious conservative figures. But his time at The Post was dogged by questions about past conduct in Britain: plaintiffs in civil suits against Murdoch’s tabloids had alleged that Lewis was involved in efforts to hide evidence. Before he started at The Post, NPR reported that Lewis had pressured the network to drop reporting about those London cases and had tried to dissuade The Post’s then-executive editor from pursuing the story.
Lewis’s personnel moves and editorial direction also ignited internal disputes. He hired long-time associates and made management changes that prompted departures, including that of former executive editor Sally Buzbee, who viewed a proposed new role as a demotion. Plans to appoint a former British colleague to a top news job were derailed amid renewed scrutiny of past conduct.
Bezos’s stewardship of The Post, once hailed when he bought the paper in 2013 as a savior willing to treat the paper as a generational investment, shifted amid the paper’s financial decline. In 2023 Bezos ousted publisher Fred Ryan when it became clear previous strategies were not stemming losses. In late 2024 and early 2025, changes on the opinion page and other editorial decisions aligned more closely with Bezos’s stated priorities — including a pivot in February 2025 to emphasize “personal liberties and free markets” — and produced sharp subscriber backlash. The paper lost more than 375,000 digital subscribers in a period of months, a decline estimated at about 15%.
Former Post leader Marty Baron criticized the leadership decisions that contributed to the crisis. After the layoffs, Baron published a blistering statement saying the paper’s problems “were made indefinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top.”
Staff protests followed the cuts. Journalists rallied outside the paper’s Washington headquarters and protesters posted flyers accusing Lewis of harming the institution. Lewis’s resignation note to staff was terse and upbeat: “All — after two years of transformation at The Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” he wrote, adding that the paper could not have a better owner than Bezos and that difficult decisions had been necessary to ensure a sustainable future for The Post. The message was sent with the heading “No subject.”
Bezos and representatives for Lewis and Murray did not offer additional comment beyond the statements issued Saturday evening.