Washington Post Publisher and CEO Will Lewis told hard-hit employees on Monday that readership was falling so sharply that something drastic had to be done to make the company profitable.
The meeting came after the sudden departure of editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee, who moved from The Associated Press to The Washington Post in 2021.
“We need world-class journalism every day, and people who help us do that are a real asset to the organization,” he said. He added that he “really enjoyed working with Sally” and that “[ed] It could have gone on for longer, but it didn’t.” Vanity FairBased on the people who attended the meeting.
The meeting was tense at times, as some staff felt Buzbee’s resignation had not been handled properly and opposed replacing a woman with a white man. The issue of diversity among the paper’s management was raised multiple times. Lewis said that while a lack of diversity was an issue, the main issue was how the paper in the nation’s capital was wasting money.
Lewis has “removed all diversity from its leadership” and therefore “cannot expect to attract new readers.”
“We’re losing a lot of money. Our readership has been cut in half over the last few years. People aren’t reading your stories. You can’t fake it anymore,” Lewis said. “So I had to take decisive, urgent steps to track down the best people I’ve ever worked with and move on.”
The Washington Post gave short notice of Buzbee’s departure on Sunday to avoid being overtaken by The New York Times, one of the reasons employees felt Buzbee was being disrespected. I got it. In any case, the Times published the story before the Post.
Despite breaking news about the company’s worsening financial situation and declining viewership, employees who spoke to Vanity Fair remained fixated on the lack of diversity.
“It seems unfair that she’s leaving in this way,” the staffer said, adding that in conversations with colleagues, “the magazine’s first female editor-in-chief ofThe Washington Post We received a one-paragraph farewell letter at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, learning that she had been replaced by white men we didn’t know.”
New York Post Reports Lewis impressed upon people the need to “follow the plan.”
Lewis has “removed any diversity from its leadership” and “is not expected to attract any new readers,” a source told the New York Post.
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