This reporting is one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints her
Upon taking the role of Washington Post publisher in 2014, Fred Ryan told the Financial Times that he didn’t see any one place as the arbiter of journalism. “There’s room for many winners,” he said.
Eight years later, The Washington Post can’t seem to cement itself as one, and its staffers point the blame at Ryan.
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Last week’s dramatic announcement of impending layoffs enraged—and unified—a newsroom unlike any episode in recent memory, multiple staffers told The Daily Beast. But the announcement also highlighted fractures within the historic paper, including between its publisher and his choice of editor, and its editor with her staff.
Executive Editor Sally Buzbee was often cast as the villain in the summer’s bubbling tensions, including political reporter Dave Weigel’s suspension, political reporter Felicia Sonmez’s firing, new social media policies, and return-to-office mandates. It was her name on memos to staff ordering them to behave, and it was she who was considered responsible for the personnel decisions that saw Weigel suspended, Sonmez fired, and the laying off of its entire Sunday magazine staff.
But staffers have acknowledged with hindsight that Buzbee’s power has only come across as more limited as the year has gone on, with multiple Post employees believing she has become siloed as Ryan makes sweeping decisions impacting the newsroom. She told staffers as recently as last Monday that she did not anticipate any further mass layoffs following the magazine’s scrapping—two days before Ryan announced there would be. Buzbee later acknowledged she only found out a day before, according to The New York Times, while managing editor Liz Seymour said in a Thursday bargaining session she found out on Wednesday.
Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and Publisher Fred Ryan.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty“The way he rolled out the layoff info has been very humiliating for Sally,” one newsroom staffer told The Daily Beast. “This has caused the newsroom staff to seriously question whether she has any influence or control over what’s going on, even if we’re rooting for her.”
The Post and Buzbee did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Others have speculated that Ryan has gatekept a relationship with owner Jeff Bezos, with some wondering whether Buzbee has any direct contact with him at all. One staffer noted Bezos appeared at a birthday party for former executive editor Marty Baron, who predated Ryan by nearly two years.
It was Ryan, however, who hired Buzbee in 2021 over newsroom leaders such as Steven Ginsberg and Cameron Barr, who maintained internal bases of support. Since Buzbee’s hire, multiple managing editors—including Ginsberg, Kat Downs Mulder, and Tracy Grant—have departed for other jobs.
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Ryan’s seemingly unfettered influence has rankled staffers since last week. About 30 staffers have joined the paper’s union since Wednesday, according to Post Guild leadership, including some of the newsroom’s top stars. The guild has seen its newsroom representation grow from around 47 percent of eligible staffers—which includes both newsroom employees and business operations—in March 2019 to 62 percent as of Friday. Of eligible newsroom employees alone, 73 percent are guild members, indicating rising growth as the Post has grown behemothic.
Even some editors have acknowledged the chaos Ryan’s sudden declaration last week caused.
“This has been an exceedingly difficult week and we know you are upset and anxious about what is to come,” national editors Matea Gold and Philip Rucker wrote on Thursday morning, adding that they were committed to their staff and providing answers. “We are confident this newsroom can weather this moment, drawing on the talent and grit that powers us every day, The public is counting on us to do so.”
Some staffers feel the Post has not capitalized strongly on the newsroom’s success, even as the industry has seen advertising flatline. The New York Times reported that the paper was on track to lose money by the end of 2022 as digital subscribers and advertising fell.
Ryan’s reaction in the wake of the Trump years—including his sudden layoff announcement—has been compared to panic among newsroom journalists, even as he said during Wednesday’s town hall that he wanted to build better content to drive subscriptions.
“It sort of feels like the newsroom is getting punished for the sales team’s failures,” the staffer said. “[The Washington Post’s] journalism remains world class. It’s not the newsroom’s fault the business side has failed to capitalize on that.”
Ryan did tout one product during the town hall: NewsPrint, which measures a reader’s news diet in a feature similar to Spotify’s “Wrapped.” “It does feel a little bit like throwing spaghetti against the wall in a number of ways,” another staffer told Confider. “It does feel like the Post has lost a little bit of its swagger after Marty Baron.” Guild members have discussed the possibility of a vote of a no-confidence letter against Ryan, but there are no formal plans as of now.
It remains unclear how the Post moves forward, and who it keeps, but it did appear the paper wanted its employees to forget the past. The paper uploaded Wednesday’s town hall to its internal system GuidePost last week—but cut it off just as guild employees began questioning Ryan.
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