Will Lewis, the Washington Post’s publisher and CEO, told whiplashed staff on Monday the paper needs to do something radical to make the company profitable because readership has drastically declined.
The meeting was held after executive editor Sally Buzbee abruptly left the Washington Post after coming from the Associated Press in 2021.
“We need world-class journalism every single day, and the people that are coming in to help us do that will be a real benefit to the organization,” he said. He said he “really enjoyed working with Sally” and “wish[ed] it could have gone on for longer, but it couldn’t,” according to Vanity Fair, based on people who were in the meeting.
The meeting became tense at times because some staffers felt Buzbee’s departure was not handled correctly and they objected to a woman being replaced with another white man. The issue of diversity within the paper’s leadership was brought up several times. Lewis said the lack of diversity is an issue but that the main problem is how the nation’s capital newspaper is hemorrhaging money.
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