Washington Post Editor to Staff: Time to Get on Board or Get Out

Since his arrival at the struggling newspaper, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis has fought to reverse the plunge in revenue and readership to save this great American newspaper. His greatest challenge has been the staff itself, which seems willing to embrace bankruptcy rather than give up its bias. This week, Lewis sent another warning to his intransigent staff: get on board or leave now.

I have written about Lewis’s fight to save the Post from itself over the years. Many writers and editors seemed to believe that owner Jeff Bezos would run the newspaper as a type of vanity project, bankrolling the operation as readers leave en masse.

They were wrong. Bezos seems to believe that the Post should write for people other than themselves and even make a profit.

Lewis, a former British media executive, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Other staffers could not get past the gender and race of those who would oversee them. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.

Bezos wants the Post to be a viable newspaper again and some of us who once wrote for the Post applauded his efforts. However, writers who have contributed to the free fall of the Post were apoplectic.

Amanda Katz, who resigned from the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, offered a vivid example of the culture that Bezos is trying to change at the Post. Katz said the change was “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.”

The most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Not surprisingly, Bump wrote the condemnation on Bluesky, a site that promises a type of safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.

Bump previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

We have previously discussed the sharp change in culture at the Post, which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.

Lewis is still laboring to return the Post to objective journalism. He is even using the language of the left in encouraging them to “reinvent” or “reimagine” the Post. He discussed  the Post’s “reinvention journey” it has taken in recent months, including its “reimagining” of its opinion pages that “champion American values” among other company initiatives.

“The moment demands that we continue to rethink all aspects of our organization and business to maximize our impact. If we want to reconnect with our audience and continue to defend democracy, more changes at The Post will be necessary. And to succeed, we need to be united as a team with a strong belief and passion in where we are heading.

I understand and respect, however, that our chosen path is not for everyone,. That’s exactly why we introduced the voluntary separation program. As we continue in this new direction, I want to ask those who do not feel aligned with the company’s plan to reflect on that. The VSP is designed to support you in making this decision, give you the ability to weigh your options thoughtfully and with less concern about financial consequences. And if you think that it’s time to move on to a new chapter, the VSP helps you take that next step with more security.”

In other words, please leave now.

In some ways, Bezos and Lewis have faced the same challenge as executives at other companies, from Facebook to X, in changing a culture. You cannot do it with a staff created for an entirely different purpose. The Post has spent years advancing advocacy journalism over objectivity, promulgating false claims, and feeding the echo chamber on the left.

One of the reasons that X was able to make such a rapid turnaround is that Musk got rid of much of the staff. Facebook has also been pushing for massive staff reductions and changes. The problem at the Post is not the ship, it is the crew.

Many of us are rooting for Lewis in seeking to right this ship. We need the Washington Post back as a leading newspaper committed to traditional journalism.