Since his arrival at the struggling newspaper, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis has fought to reverse the plunge in revenue and readership to save this great American newspaper. His greatest challenge has been the staff itself, which seems willing to embrace bankruptcy rather than give up its bias. This week, Lewis sent another warning to his intransigent staff: get on board or get out.
I have written about Lewis’s fight to save the Post from itself over the years. Many writers and editors seemed to believe that owner Jeff Bezos would run the newspaper as a type of vanity project, bankrolling the operation as readers leave en masse.
They were wrong. Bezos seems to believe that the Post should write for people other than themselves and even make a profit.
Lewis, a former British media executive, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:
“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response was fury from the staff, which called for Lewis and other new editors to be scrapped.
Some staffers could not get past the gender and race of those who would oversee them. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.
Bezos wants the Post to be a viable newspaper again and some of us who once wrote for the Post applauded his efforts. However, writers who have contributed to the free fall of the Post were apoplectic.
Amanda Katz, who resigned from the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, offered a vivid example of the culture that Bezos is trying to change at the Post. Katz said the change was “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.”
The most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Not surprisingly, Bump wrote the condemnation on Bluesky, a site that promises a type of safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.
Bump previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.
We have previously discussed the sharp change in culture at the Post, which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.
Lewis is still laboring to return the Post to objective journalism. He is even using the language of the left in encouraging them to “reinvent” or “reimagine” the Post. He discussed the Post’s “reinvention journey” it has taken in recent months, including its “reimagining” of its opinion pages that “champion American values” among other company initiatives.
“The moment demands that we continue to rethink all aspects of our organization and business to maximize our impact. If we want to reconnect with our audience and continue to defend democracy, more changes at The Post will be necessary. And to succeed, we need to be united as a team with a strong belief and passion in where we are heading.
I understand and respect, however, that our chosen path is not for everyone,. That’s exactly why we introduced the voluntary separation program. As we continue in this new direction, I want to ask those who do not feel aligned with the company’s plan to reflect on that. The VSP is designed to support you in making this decision, give you the ability to weigh your options thoughtfully and with less concern about financial consequences. And if you think that it’s time to move on to a new chapter, the VSP helps you take that next step with more security.”
In other words, please leave now.
In some ways, Bezos and Lewis have faced the same challenge as executives at other companies, from Facebook to X, in changing a culture. You cannot do it with a staff created for an entirely different purpose. The Post has spent years advancing advocacy journalism over objectivity, promulgating false claims, and feeding the echo chamber on the left.
One of the reasons that X was able to make such a rapid turnaround is that Musk got rid of much of the staff. Facebook has also been pushing for massive staff reductions and changes. The problem at the Post is not the ship, it is the crew.
Many of us are rooting for Lewis in seeking to right this ship. We need the Washington Post back as a leading newspaper committed to traditional journalism.
As we’ve seen since 1/20/2025, the Trump revolution will take time to weed out the flakes that created the Democrat cesspool.
Journalism used to be a respected field, but without objectivity, it’s just propaganda which is now represented by failing rags like WaPo and the NYT.
The good news is that Democrats didn’t learn anything last November, so they are still on the wrong side of all of the issues about which Americans care the most; illegal alien deportation, men cheating against women in sports and ridding us of fraud, waste and abuse of our tax dollars.
Trump has had an incredible almost 6 months of wins, and if WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, ABC, CBS, NBC, AP, NPR and PBS can all keep losing support and funding, this will be the most wildly-accomplished administration in American history.
“Well there goes the last DJ, he says what he wants to say, he plays what he wants to play…..and now he has a station in Mexico.” Where are Air America and Randi Rhodes now?
Very interesting that Will Lewis is being held up as a paragon of journalistic purity.
He has a long history of criminal malfeasance in running newspapers.
He ran the News of the World paper owned by Rupert Murdoch in the UK. During his tenure reporters at the paper were accused of hacking the phones and emails of multiple celebrities, members of the Royal Family and members of Parliament. He presided over a coverup of the hacking by defying a court order to preserve evidence.
Several reporters at the paper were sentenced to prison for their role in the phone hacking.
Many of the celebrities whose phones were hacked sued for damages.
The paper paid out over $1.5 billion in damages and was forced to close.
Last year, a reporter at the Washington Post wrote an article about Lewis’s past history.
Lewis tried to kill the story, causing several resignations of the editorial staff.
ATS – Lewis is merely the person tasked with bringing market Discipline to WaPo.
Get rid of him if you want.
The Problem is STILL the same – WaPo MUST deliver content that MORE people want to maintain its current size or it must radically downsize to continue delivering the left wing content that only a few people want.
This is a FUNDIMENTAL economic issue – it is called the law of supply and demand.
There is plenty of room in the market for radical left wing nut journalism – But the demand for that type of journalism is only a tiny portion of the supply of radical left wing journalists and outlets.
Conversely Fox has thrived because it is serving an underserved market – there is MORE demand for Fox than the rest of the MSM combined.
Is that a political comentary – in some ways most definitely. But most importantly it is a reflection of the values of consumers.
And we are seeing that not just at WaPo and the rest of the MSM, but throughout the economy.
There is far more supply of left wing nut content and products than there is demand.
Anheiser Busch unintentionally proved there is very little demand for Trans Beer. AHB probably would have done fine if they had introduced Mulvaney on a Boutique Beer. But they chose to feature him on their flagship product. They lost 25% of their market in a few months and over sever years despite massive efforts to reverse the trend and appeals to the “american values” of their core consumers – they are STILL down 25%.
Turns out Beer is a comodity and despite the efforts of beer companies to claim some core superiority of one beer over another, Once beer drinkers move in response to ideological factors, their is no actual value proposition to bring them back.
Throughout the marketplace – there is with certainty a demand for left wing nonsense. But the supply greatly exceeds the demand,
This has always been a core problem with those on the left – they beleive their complete nonsense is far more popular than it actually is.
They also believe it works when time and again it fails, and the rest of us must pay the price.
The values of the left can only win a small portion of the marketplace absent FORCE aka government.
Rag to Riches
Darren: (I was going to say “Way Po’ [poor]”
but yours is mucho funnier!
Liked by 1 person
This silly effort to save the Post by CEO Will Lewis has now been going on for years. One really has to wonder about the sincerity of any effort that is this drawn out.
You want to make a mark and get the ball rolling, Will? Fire Phil Bump and the rest of the stooges will get moving.
“This silly effort to save the Post by CEO Will Lewis has now been going on for years. ”
Turley also wrote “years”, which seems to be in error. Did you just crib from his text? Because, unless Wikipedia is completely in error (possibly, but usually not the case on easily verifiable facts such as dates), Lewis began serving as Washington Post CEO on January 2, 2024. To me, describing that period as “years” in this context is inaccurate, and possibly deceptive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lewis_(journalist)#Early_life_and_career
I completely disagree! It’s NOT worth saving at all. In fact, the faster the legacy media self immolates, the better for everyone! Their echo chamber is a small fraction of the population, and as such, irrelevant.
If the editors, remove any opinions, unless it is an opinion piece, then perhaps the writer will learn or get frustrated and leave. After all it is their opinions to their group that makes them feel important. This applies not only to the Washington Post but any other news organization left or right or in the center.
“If the editors, remove any opinions, unless it is an opinion piece, then perhaps the writer will learn or get frustrated and leave.”
Would the WaPo readers not quickly tire of buying a bundie of blank sheets of paper?
Before Bezos will be able to turn The Post around he must first issue a full front page apology for what his paper did to The United States of America. Short of that, my best advice would be to hold an ink liquidation sale. The thumb they tried to put on the election scale has left a mark very similar to a fingerprint left by a common criminal at a booking procedure. There will never be honor among thieves. Never forget that they were “mostly peaceful protests”.
I think about the issues we discuss here on the blog. Do the issues of the left and far Left progressives fit into a conceptual duffle bag? How about the more things change the more they stay the same? What if the view is we have a return of a Confederacy? A Confederacy of socialism, noncitizen voting via no borders and sanctuary cities, Newsguard/ advertising boycott censorship, and CRT/DEI loathing of meritocracy trumping identity politics. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman marched to the sea to wreck that Confederacy’s means of waging war. The Current Confederacy sees Tom Homan’s march as a wreck of the means to wage elections. Doubtless a better duffle bag view can be had beyond this writer.
Whistleblower Documents Implicate Emil Bove in Criminal Contempt Order by Chief Judge Boasberg
Emil Bove, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, is sworn in before testifying during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on June 25, 2025 in Washington, DC. A whistleblower alleged that Bove, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, told Justice Department staff to defy court orders and continue to carry out Trump’s deportation plans.
By: Tom Joscelyn and Ryan Goodman ~ July 11, 2025
https://www.justsecurity.org/116777/bove-criminal-contempt-boasberg/
DoJ whistleblower provides emails backing claim Emil Bove defied courts over deportations
Messages released by fired DoJ lawyer show officials were aware they might have to ignore judicial orders
… Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, responded to the issue on X on Thursday.
“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote. “As Mr Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order. And no one was ever asked to defy a court order.
“This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This ‘whistleblower’ signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”
By: Sam Levine ~ July 10th 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/10/doj-whistleblower-deportations-emil-bove
Even if true, so what. The administration won’t lift a finger to enforce any emissions from the odious toad’s courtroom, and even if congress tries impeachment, there won’t be a conviction, so it’s all moot. Enjoy your temporary dopamine hit though.
Also, the Guardian, give me a break. The Weekly World News has more credibility.
The Boasberg case is on life support, SCOTUS has cut the jurisdictional legs out from underneath him TWICE so far, and he is still trying to pretend there is some way he can game the constitution and law to retain jurisdiction.
There is no actual case here. There is just a judge acting outside the law and constitution and demanding that the world KowTow
While no one disobeyed Boasberg’s order AFTER THE FACT, Absolutely Bove and others KNEW Boasberg was going to unconstitutionally and illegally rule against them, and BEFORE THE FACT they sent two planeloads of TdA out of the country BEFORE Boasberg had the oportunity to illegally stop them.
“Also, the Guardian, give me a break. The Weekly World News has more credibility.”
True. Their last shred of it vanished years ago when Greenwald left.
I have no doubt that Bove said – Put these TdA members on a plane and get them out of the country.
I have little doubt that he did so knowing that Left Wing Nut Boasberg would ultimate rule against that.
But the FACT is – despite Boasbergs claims of contempt, that you can only defy an ACTUAL court order.
The planes were in the air and outside of US airspace When Boasberg pontificated from the bench that he would rule against the administration.
One had landed in El Salvador and the other was on final approach over Hondoras when Boasberg finally issued a written order – which was much more limited than his rantings in court, and would not have prevented what had already occured.
And after all this – the Boasberg case has gone to SCOTUS twice, and SCOTUS has made it repeatedly clear – The only issue the courts have jurisdiction over with regard to the AEA is Habeaus, and Habeaus claims MUST be made individually at the court where the person making the Habeus claim is detained – and in the Boasberg case that was Texas.
Further SCOTUS did NOT establish new law in so ruling.
Though there is more due process under the INA than the AEA, the overal law is still the same – Article III courts only have Habeus jurisdiction in immigration matters.
Judge Boasberg NEVER had a legitimate case before him.
The rule of law requires that ALL government actors are following the law.
No one sane would claim that the Trump administration must follow an order By Judge Boasberg prohibiting US B2’s from bombing Fordow,
or trying to overrule congress and the president when they declared war after Perl Harbor.
When the courts act outside their jurisdiction THEY not those who challenge them are lawless – outside the rule of law.
Nowhere in the constitution does it say that idiotic and blatanly unconstitutional decisions by lower courts acting way beyond their jurisdiction must be obeyed.
You on the left rant about “no kings” – yet what you advocate for is making 700 kings out of federal judges.
The jurisdiction of the courts according to the constitution is defined by the law.
If you want judges like Boasberg to act as they have – CHANGE THE LAW.
Otherwise – the problem of criminal contempt for the law resides with the COURTS not the administration.
The recent SCOTUS decision regarding nationwide injunctions should never have been necescary.
There is nothing in the courts decision that does more than tell lower courts FOLLOW THE EXISTING LAW.
Yet that decision vacated over 100 lower court orders.
100 Lower courts had acted outside their jurisdiction.
Print the actual emails or it’s hearsay
You think that Trump’s DOJ is going to prosecute Bove for the non-crime of a priori contempt of illegal judicial orders ?
Worse still your a complete idiot if you even tried.
I doubt the case would have to go to SCOTUS to get laughed out of court.
The DC circuit leans far to the left – but even so the DC apeals court has ruled FOR Trump and against this handful of left wing nut judges more than 1/2 the time.
We keep hearing that there were hundreds of instances were courts found against Trump.
Of those – which are still in effect ? Of your Hundreds of challenges to Trump, I doubt more than a half dozen lower court orders are still in effect.
To be clear – many of the cases are not over – SCOTUS for the most part has eliminated illegally granted TRO’s and preliminary injunctions and removed cases to the courts with actual jurisdiction. Atleast some of the challenges to Trump are still proceeding to hearings on the Merits.
But those will move much slower, be far harder for left wing nuts to win, will require courts to actually apply the law.
and because the TRO’s and preliminary injunctions are gone, decisions will not take effect until the final appeal is decided.
And in your hearts even most left wing nuts know Trump is winning nearly all of those.
So much for the time-proven “nip it in the bud” school of thought…
Otherwise, (and on a much larger scale), more resistance, more impedance, more militant defiance, more cost, more effort, more labor, more frustration, more loss…
The “writers” of the WaCompost must believe the tail wags the dog and can do so continuously as otherwise they would change. The handwriting is on the wall and even the most benighted must be able to see it and yet they continue with their tantrums even though there is literally no place else to go once they lose their, undoubtedly, overpaid Bezos funded sinecure. When they inevitably lost their jobs are they all going to learn to code? Oh wait, I forgot that is now done by AI. Well, there is always Starbucks!
*. YES, people are sick of AA, DEI, CRT and it’s emotional propaganda and are replacing it with MERIT. Just the facts, sir, and we can think for ourselves.
Clean it out! Thanks
Press is specifically targeted in the Constitution making its value high. Merit belongs in journalism. It isn’t just another job and no one wants poisoned pizza.
I’m sorry, but isn’t there such a thing as a “pink Slip”? Problem solved.
i whole heartedly agree with you. The management is trying to be compassionate. The pink slips will come hard on those that either do not change their mind set or leave while the getting out is good.
The Washington Post is no longer a newspaper; it’s performance theater. Its reporters have traded press passes for jester’s robes, acting not as journalists but as the court fools of a dying narrative.
Apparently, Bezos has had his fill of the show. The applause has faded, the laughs are hollow, and now he’s steering his truckloads of money toward something less tragic, and possibly more truthful.
It’s infotainment and doesn’t qualify as anything but poisoned words. What’s missing is journalism stating facts.
Mr. Lewis,
You can not turn around the newspaper with the crew that drove it into the ditch. You must replace the crew, not plead with them. There are more than enough newspaper journalists out there who still want to report the news. NewsNation is building a network with them. Look at CNN, they are trying to turn their fortunes around with the people still beholden to advocacy, not reporting. How’s that working out?
You and your bosses have a tough slog ahead. Building trust is easy compared to regaining it.
Well said, Anon. Well said.
Good article. It would take 20 years for the Washington Compost to gain back my trust. I lost trust many years ago, after being an avid reader in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It’s hard to comeback after losing folks trust. I think they are done in 5 years. Perhaps they can just open a Substack account under their name, which would have the same impact as their newspaper.
“Perhaps they can just open a Substack account under their name, which would have the same impact as their newspaper.”
Good solution, except probably for Bezos. I think there would be far more write-downs involved in that process than even he could take advantage of.
I got news for you Will – Once your audience leaves they aren’t coming back.
“which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.”
“Once your audience leaves they aren’t coming back.”
That is not accurate.
There’s a long history of companies being successfully turned around: Apple, Lego, Best Buy, Delta.
Once restored to their fundamental purpose, audiences (customers) do come back.
“fundamental purpose”
Amen.
Even in this vast ocean of free-speech, “Dragnet” tells us how to separate the flotsam from the jetsam.
“Just the facts, ma’am. All the facts. Leave the rest for MSNBC and WaPo”
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
Exactly.
And don’t try to feed us the propagandistic swill that they’re just “fact checkers.”
We have a generation of “elites” that have been groomed into believing that their opinion matters and that the plebeians are on the edge of their seat waiting to be enlightened. Ketanji is a great example of this mental disorder.
BillyG,
Yes. That would be all those who still watch CNN, MSNBC etc without the capacity to think for themselves.
In a high-tech society, you’re never going to overturn “knowledge is power”. Our Founders were clear that a self-governing people would need to be educated, and nourished with sound, factual information. You won’t find any purchase in our founding documents for “free speech” going as far as the freedom to dupe the public. Why? The consent of the governed means INFORMED consent — not consent obtained through trickery and deceit.
This is an ongoing problem, now that social media has dispensed with mentally-healthy filtering of voices by gatekeepers. The low-info, low-inquisitive citizen becomes putty in the hands of conniving infowarriors. And, a borderless internet opens up our brains (and that of impressionable kids) to foreign opinion-shaping ops. I read this am that choking during sex has been experienced by 50% of the young women of America, a totally unhealthy, repugnant practice spawned by the few deranged and then spread by the porn industry.
Our public education system needs serious reform of misplaced priorities, and a return to cultivating citizenship, independent thinking, and moral clarity.
I continue to believe in the jury system as much superior to judicial elites deciding truth from falsehood. And I continue to believe in the wisdom of the majority as expressed in general elections. That said, primary elections are activist-dominated, unrepresentative of public opinion, and are throwing our leadership choices off kilter (e.g., NYC / Zohran Mandami).
I draw the line at activism that has crossed over into zealousness — abandonment of common sense in the name of “the cause”.
Here’s a thought: how about just letting the WaPo die in darkness?
The idea that important media institutions should just fizzle out and be replaced (rather than adapt and survive) indicates aloofness about how hard it is to build new nation-spanning institutions.
I’d point out that the fracturing of media, and splintering Americans into disjoint sub-audiences with their own narratives, is NOT conducive to national cohesion and problem-solving. When there were only 3 TV news organizations, and a half-dozen major city newspapers widely read, at least Americans shared the same assumptions and reality framing.
It’s for that reason why having the WaPo repair itself is better than having it completely replaced by a thousand podcasts. We need shared understandings (brimming with, and wrought from mentally-healthy divergent thinking) to endure as a well-functioning nation.
The kiss of death is a media splintered in a way where there are simply no longer any voices that all Americans can stand listening to. That outcome presages civil war, and must be avoided.
When it is no longer a important media institution, then they should fizzle out. And they are doing it by their own doing.
Independent media, like The Free Press, are replacing those institutions and are doing it quite nicely.
What is the chant blm has? Something about no peace?
Constantly battling the cunning and sly has no peace in it nor domestic tranquility. People need peace because people need rest.
AI is concerning.
“…aloofness about how hard it is to build new nation-spanning institutions.”
That would appear to be a somewhat antiquated POV. How hard was it for Turley to build the presence we are on now? I am not claiming this to be “nation-spanning” the sense you intended, but for the part-time efforts of one person with a very limited number of part-time helpers, it is pretty impressive, and exemplifies what can now be done with very limited resources.
“media institutions should just fizzle out and be replaced. “
That is disruptive innovation.
“national cohesion”
National cohesion is foundational to nationalism.
How could we let the blacksmiths on every corner disappear? (sarcasm)
“We need shared understandings.”
Shared understanding doesn’t require a shared anchor; it requires shared truth. The medium can change, but the honesty must not.
Funny