On Sunday night, minutes after Will Lewis, The Washington Post’s chief executive, told employees that the newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, was being replaced, managers gathered on a conference call to hear from their late boss.
Buzbee told them that the new organizational structure created by Mr. Lewis – effectively splitting the Washington Post newsroom and opinion into three smaller divisions – did not work for him. He added that Mr. Lewis was pushing for an aggressive move to turn The Post around, and called on the editor to make a decision now.
“I would have preferred to stay to help us get through this time, but it just got to a point where we couldn’t,” Buzbee said, according to people familiar with the matter.
The shocking call – which some attendees described as funereal – added to the growing tension between the newsroom and Mr. Lewis, who has set about remaking The Post since it began in January.
Many journalists and editors think that Buzbee will stay until at least the presidential election in November. Just two weeks ago, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Buzbee spoke to The Post staff at a long-awaited public meeting.
But Buzbee interfered with Mr. Lewis’ plan to split The Post’s newsroom into sections, according to two people familiar with his thinking, and the pair quickly settled it. Mr. Lewis said he could have run one of the two sections of the newsroom, but he backed out, according to people familiar with the interaction.
The reorganization will be an effective demotion for Buzbee, who is currently in charge of all news content at The Washington Post. The new structure, which adds a new division focused on social media services and journalism under the supervision of a new editor, will likely take a large portion of The Post’s editorial output from her watch.
Mr. Lewis temporarily replaced Buzbee with Matt Murray, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Murray will run The Post’s newsroom as executive editor through the election, at which point he will transition to open a division focused on services and social media journalism.
A new editor, Robert Winnett, will take over the company’s core coverage areas after that. Over the past decade, Mr Winnett has run news operations at The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
David Shipley will continue to run The Post’s opinion section. All three – Mr Winnett, Mr Murray and Mr Shipley – will report directly to Mr Lewis.
Mr. Murray, 58, was introduced to The Post’s newsroom Monday at a town hall meeting that began with a long standing ovation for Buzbee, according to several people in attendance. During the meeting, Mr. Lewis was grilled by a reporter at The Post about the lack of diversity in the employees who replaced Ms. Buzbee – Mr. Murray, Mr. Winnett and Mr. Shipley are white men.
According to a recording obtained by The New York Times, one of The Washington Post’s star political reporters, Ashley Parker, asked Mr. Lewis how the newspaper reached its decision, adding that there was a skeptical interpretation that Mr. Lewis was simply hiring employees. associates to help run The Post.
“When you were here before, you talked a lot about how you care about diversity – and people talk about diversity – but when push came to shove, they said, ‘Well, I looked and I didn’t find anybody,'” Ms. Parker said. .
In response, Mr. Lewis said diversity would be an “ongoing commitment” at The Post, adding that he had “the most diverse masthead the Journal has had” over the years at Dow Jones, publisher of The Journal.
Mr. Murray is a long-time confidant of Mr. Lewis, who appointed him to the top position at The Wall Street Journal in 2018. The newspaper through the coronavirus pandemic.
The editorial changes come at a difficult time for The Washington Post. The newspaper is preparing to cover the homestretch of the presidential election, including nominating conventions in Chicago and Milwaukee this summer. It is unusual to change the top editor of a US newspaper during such a period.
In an all-hands meeting two weeks ago, Mr. Lewis rattled off a list of priorities that included “build,” “fix” and “say it.” Mr. Lewis said The Post was in dire straits, with losses of more than $70 million over the past year and a 50 percent drop in audience over the same period.
At the end of Monday’s meeting, Kainaz Amaria, editor of the national visual company The Post, said Buzbee’s treatment “doesn’t feel fair,” adding that the circumstances of his exit could make it difficult to trust the new leadership.
“To start like this is very difficult,” Ms. Amaria said, according to the recording.
