Washington Post editor and CEO clashed on reorganization before her exit (2024)

Lewis didn’t want to wait. Hired by Post owner Jeff Bezos with a mandate to reverse a sharp decline in subscriptions and a $77 million deficit over the past year, he wanted to execute the new plan immediately. She also balked at the role he saw for her in the new structure — and the two agreed she should depart, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Buzbee’s abrupt exit after three years at The Post — which even her own department heads learned about late Sunday in a companywide email from Lewis — left the newsroom reeling.

A Monday morning newsroom meeting to introduce Matt Murray, who will take on a new role as a top Post editor, turned contentious as staff members pressed Lewis about Buzbee’s departure and his plans to spin off portions of The Post’s journalism into a new division.

Murray, a former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, vowed to uphold journalism standards and The Post’s legacy.

“This is change about growth,” he said. “It’s change about the future. It’s change about building on The Post and taking it to the next generation and enhancing the legacy of the place.”

Lewis, who previously worked with Murray at the Journal, called him “a proper journalist who loves causing trouble and working with fellow editors and reporters, and an old-fashioned editor who will edit each day.”

Though Lewis took staff questions, he refused to give specifics about the decision-making behind Buzbee’s departure.

“I really enjoyed working with Sally,” Lewis said. “I wish it could have gone on for longer, but it couldn’t. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to take that bit of the conversation any further.”

He apologized for the manner of the announcement. The news “began to leak out, which is why we had to scramble.”

Buzbee, the first woman to head the news operations of The Post, has not responded to requests for comment.

She had been hired in 2021 by The Post’s previous publisher, Fred Ryan, after the retirement of former executive editor Martin Baron. Buzbee spent most of her career at the Associated Press, most recently as its top editor. Ryan stepped down as publisher in 2023, and since Lewis has stepped into the role, he has made several executive-level hires.

As recently as this weekend, Buzbee had given no indication that she would be leaving. On Saturday night, she attended the White House News Photographers Association award dinner, where she chatted with Post journalists and sat next to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

And less than two weeks ago, Buzbee participated in a companywide presentation to discuss a plan by Lewis to revamp core elements of the business, including new subscription offerings.

She told Post department heads late Sunday in a brief call that she had been presented with a reorganization plan that she didn’t want to be a part of, according to three people familiar with her remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak.

The publisher and his top editor had discussed Lewis’s restructuring plans over several weeks, and Buzbee had hoped to persuade him not to execute his plan until after the election, according to a person familiar with their conversations.

But Lewis was eager to accelerate the timing of his plan. He offered Buzbee oversight of a new division of the company, which he described Sunday evening as being focused on “service and social media journalism.”

But Buzbee was uncomfortable with the structure and did not believe she could be effective in the role, the person familiar with their conversations said. That left her with no real place in the organization and the two agreed that she needed to step aside.

For weeks before the announcement of her departure, though, Lewis had made inquiries to potential candidates to succeed Buzbee, according to people familiar with his discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect confidential communications.

Buzbee was not present for the staff meeting Monday but received a healthy round of applause from Post colleagues, who questioned her treatment by company leaders.

Murray was replaced as the top editor of the Journal in early 2023 after nearly five years but remained at parent company News Corp in an advisory role. He had been in discussions for another job opportunity, but as those deliberations wore on, he decided to accept Lewis’s invitation to join The Post, one of those people said.

In his own remarks, Murray, who spent 29 years at the Journal, focused on the future, which he said will meld the legacy of The Post with a forward-looking approach to news.

A native of the Washington, D.C., area, Murray said he doesn’t plan to remake The Post in the Journal’s image — and that The Post is the newspaper that made him want to work in journalism.

“I’ve been in the business long enough, and I’ve done enough things that I’m not interested at this point in managing decline,” Murray said. “I’m interested in the future and growth. … This is going to be an exciting time. We’re going to have a lot of new opportunities and new things.”

Murray will serve only temporarily as Buzbee’s replacement, Lewis has said. After Election Day, he will hand over the reins of leadership for the newsroom’s core reporting areas — including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features — to Robert Winnett, a British journalist who is currently the deputy editor of Telegraph Media Group.

At that point, Murray will shift over to serve as the leader of the new company division.

Lewis previously worked alongside both Murray and Winnett — the former when he was publisher of the Journal, the latter when he was the editor of the Daily Telegraph.

During Monday’s meeting, one staff member highlighted these connections, as well as Lewis’s past remarks about his commitment to diversity.

“The most cynical interpretation sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies to come in and help run The Post,” she said. “And we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”

Lewis reaffirmed his commitment to diversity while acknowledging that “I’ve got to do better, and you’ll see that going forward.”

Lewis has referred to the new division that Murray will oversee as a “third newsroom” — distinct from the news operations that will eventually be helmed by Winnett, and distinct from The Post’s opinions section, which has always operated separately from news and which will still be overseen by David Shipley, its leader since 2022.

Yet a lack of detail about what the new division will entail — and how it will intersect with the rest of the news organization — prompted questions in the staff meeting.

In one heated exchange with a Post staffer, Lewis warned that the newsroom cannot afford to be resistant to change, saying that “decisive, urgent” actions are needed for the company to survive upheaval within the media industry and a recent loss of subscribers and revenue.

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” he said. “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.”

In his brief remarks, Murray did not share his specific editorial priorities, though he mentioned a few specific stories that will be top priorities for The Post, including the presidential election, the Donald Trump trials and the trial facing Hunter Biden.

“The Post has such a great legacy, a history and tradition of great journalism in the past and right until this morning,” he said. “There’s so much outstanding work that comes out of this newsroom. I’m humbled and proud to be a part of it.”

The decision to change editorial leadership and create a new division was part of Lewis’s new strategy for The Post, which focuses on reaching new audiences and rejecting a “one-size-fits-all” strategy for serving readers and attracting new customers.

But, Murray said there are no plans to blow things up for the sake of doing so. Going forward, Murray said the mission at The Post “will be to take what we do and really translate it the right way.”