The Baffling Disaster Unfolding at the Washington Post
It has been a very depressing week at the Washington Post. On Sunday night, the newspaper announced that executive editor Sally Buzbee had stepped down after three years atop the masthead. Buzbee’s resignation was clearly linked to new CEO and publisher Will Lewis’ decision to drastically reorganize the Post newsroom while installing two former colleagues in high-ranking editorial roles at the paper. In a newsroom meeting on Monday, Lewis defended his hires and spared no words in assessing the paper’s reported financial dilemma. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience is halved,” Lewis said. “People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
Before coming to the Post, Lewis had held executive roles at Dow Jones and at various British news organizations. He was working for the parent company of the British tabloid News of the World when that newspaper was accused of hacking into the voicemail accounts of various prominent people, including members of the British royal family. On Wednesday night, the New York Times reported that Buzbee and Lewis had recently argued over the Post’s plan to report on a lawsuit’s allegations that Lewis was involved in concealing evidence of a British tabloid’s phone-hacking efforts involving Prince Harry. According to the Times, Lewis did not want the Post to include him in its coverage of this story. The Post did so anyway, in an article that ran on May 21. Less than two weeks later, Buzbee resigned her position.
While Lewis has challenged the Times’ characterization of his meeting with Buzbee, it is still pretty embarrassing for the Post to have its publisher and CEO accused of attempting to interfere with a story that reflected poorly on him. (He reportedly also tried to quash a story at NPR.) I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that saga is more embarrassing than Lewis’ recently announced turnaround plan for the beleaguered newspaper. It’s called the “ ‘Build It’ plan,” and the “it” that Lewis hopes to build is a forward-looking “third newsroom” at the Post: an entity focused on service journalism and social media, meant to appeal to people “who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed.” (Lewis reportedly wanted to change Buzbee’s role and put her in charge of this third newsroom—a move that Buzbee reasonably saw as a demotion.) According to a Post press release, the Build It plan will incorporate “video storytelling” and “flexible payment methods.” As you might guess, the plan will also make use of A.I.
