During a Monday meeting, Washington Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis reportedly explained to his staff: “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The staff, however, appeared more concerned with diversity hires and whether or not a “woman of color” was interviewed for the role of Editor-in-Chief, now being taken by a former colleague of Lewis’s from the United Kingdom.
“I’ve had to take decisive, urgent action to set us on a different path,” Lewis told them, “sourcing talent that I have worked with that are the best of the best.”
The termination and replacement of Sally Buzbee apparently surprised staff on Sunday evening despite the paper continuing to lose power, influence, and money. Her replacement—from the centrist British Telegraph newspaper—has caused concern amongst those who prefer the Post to be used as a leftist propaganda rag rather than a newspaper.
“…given their previous affiliations with Murdoch and with the fiercely right-wing Telegraph newspaper – sometimes referred to as the Torygraph — there is a palpable fear in and out of the Post newsroom that the three men will drag the Post’s political coverage in a more pro-Trump direction.”
– Dan Froomkin, Press Watch, 2024
But the Telegraph is hardly “right-wing” anymore, nor is it at all “pro-Trump.” According to some, the reactions from Post staff have proved Lewis’s suspicions that the organization is being run for the benefit of far-left politics and politicians than its readership, which continues to decline.
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