Amidst escalating turmoil at The Washington Post, employees are openly challenging Jeff Bezos, raising questions about how much dissent the billionaire owner will tolerate as his paper faces plummeting morale and a crisis of leadership.
Newspaper observers are questioning how much criticism Bezos is willing to endure from his own discontented employees. Bezos' employees have been openly critical of their boss. “I don’t know a single person at the Post who thinks the current situation with the publisher and supposed new editor can stand,” wrote David Maraniss, an associate editor at The Post for nearly five decades and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, in a candid Facebook post. “There might be a few, but very, very few.” It remains to be seen how much more of this dissent Bezos will tolerate.
Maraniss also took a jab at Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Post who appointed Lewis, writing that Bezos is "not of and for the Post or he would understand.”
Since Bezos purchased the Washington Post, the paper has incurred losses nearly equal to its purchase price, and its audience has halved.
Scott Higham, another Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Post, echoed Maraniss’ call for Lewis to step down. “Will Lewis needs to step down for the good of The Post and the public,” Higham commented on Maraniss’ post. “He has lost the newsroom and will never win it back.”
Representatives for Bezos and The Post did not immediately comment.
The backlash from The Post’s journalists follows serious concerns raised about Lewis, who has been the subject of several explosive reports recently scrutinizing his journalistic integrity.
The New York Times reported that during his Fleet Street days, Lewis assigned an article based on stolen phone records. The Post itself reported in a 3,000-word front-page exposé that a “thief” who used deceptive tactics to obtain private material had connections with Robert Winnett, Lewis’ hand-picked incoming top editor.
These revelations, which hit The Post’s newsroom like a one-two punch, followed reports that Lewis attempted to suppress stories at The Post and NPR about his role in handling Rupert Murdoch’s UK phone hacking scandal, where he served as a lieutenant to the right-wing media mogul.
In response to these reports, Lewis initially lashed out, criticizing his own media reporters and attacking veteran NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, whom he called an “activist, not a journalist.” Lewis later sent a memo to staffers with a notably different tone, but it failed to quell the growing discontent within the newspaper’s ranks.
Inside The Post’s newsroom, morale has plummeted as staffers express alarm over Lewis’ conduct and concerns about the future direction of the newspaper under his leadership. Interviews with nearly a dozen Post staffers and others familiar with the newspaper’s internal dynamics last week revealed a workforce increasingly dismayed by the situation, with some seeking employment elsewhere.
Sensing the turmoil, Bezos on Tuesday sent a memo to top leaders at The Post, expressing support for maintaining high journalistic standards. “You have my full commitment on maintaining the quality, ethics, and standards we all believe in,” Bezos wrote. However, the memo did little to quell the growing rebellion in the newsroom.
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