Award-winning editor Tina Brown has laid into Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and ex-publisher Will Lewis, whom she called a “junket schmoozer,” over the gutting of one-third of the newspaper’s staff.
Last week’s layoffs saw the elimination of its sports and books coverage and a cutback of its foreign news team.
The Washington Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, said in a memo to employees, which was obtained by several news outlets, “The need has never been more urgent to reposition The Post. A more flexible, sustainable model will help us better navigate unprecedented volatility, competition, technological change, news-consumption habits, and cost pressure.”
Brown, known for her leadership roles at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The Daily Beast, criticized how Bezos, founder of Amazon, is running The Washington Post, while taking a jab at Lewis, who stepped down as publisher and CEO of the newspaper days after the mass layoffs.
In a Substack post on Monday, Brown said the layoffs “revealed the stark truth that Bezos doesn’t understand how to run a news organization any more than Woodward and Bernstein could figure out how to deliver dog kibble to your door by drone,” referring to the Washington Post journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
Brown said that Bezos, who bought The Washington Post in 2013, was a “staunch steward of Post values” during President Donald Trump’s first term, but said he now “appears to have checked out of the Post.”
Noting Bezos’ rise in net worth to more than $200 billion, Brown said, “You might think a fortune that stratospheric would make it easy to…not feel the need to curry favor with Trump by precipitously ending the Post’s 36-year tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, just 11 days before the 2024 election, a decision that instantly lost the paper 250,000 hard-won subscribers.”
“The Jeff Bezos who bought the Post was a different guy from the one who is allowing its destruction now. But oligarchs gonna oligarch,” Brown said.
In denouncing Lewis, Brown mentioned his reported red carpet appearance at the NFL Honors ceremony ahead of the Super Bowl last week.
“The junket schmooze was always Lewis’s MO,” Brown claimed, referring to networking done on trips, often paid for, that could shape coverage.
Brown asked, “Why did Bezos allow Lewis to fail and flail for so long? The answer can only be that, by that time, Bezos didn’t much care.”
In an email sent to staff and shared by The Washington Post’s White House bureau chief, Matt Viser, Lewis thanked Bezos “for his support” and said, “During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post.”
Bezos said in a statement announcing that Jeff D’Onofrio would take over as acting publisher and CEO, “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”
The Independent has reached out to The Washington Post and Lewis for comment.
