Two Washington Post legends urged owner Jeff Bezos to fire his hand-picked leader in order to save the beleaguered paper, according to a new report.
Former Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. and 50-year Post veteran Bob Kaiser urged the billionaire in a letter last month to fire CEO Will Lewis.
“Replacing him is a crucial first step in saving The Washington Post,” they wrote, according to The New York Times.
The move would be the first step in restoring the paper’s reputation, they argued.
Downie and Kaiser’s note marks some of the most direct pleas to Bezos since he ordered the paper’s opinion pages to focus predominantly on “free markets and personal liberties,” leading to multiple staff exits and a staff rankling.
While former owner and Post scion Don Graham, the son of publisher Katherine Graham, has remained mum on Bezos’s stewardship, former Executive Editor Marty Baron has not minced words.
“Now we know that Bezos is no Katharine Graham,” Baron wrote in an Atlantic piece earlier this month.
The Post did not respond to an immediate request for comment. A Bezos spokesperson also did not respond.
Nearly every month since October has brought fresh waves of chaos at the Post. Lewis has had to pass down Bezos edicts he sometimes disagrees with, such as the end of the Post’s tradition of presidential endorsements.
Staffers at the paper have pleaded with Bezos to offer some vision for the paper’s future after his decision to spike its planned endorsement of former Vice President Kamala Harris led more than 300,000 people to cancel their subscriptions. Lewis and then-opinion editor David Shipley urged Bezos not to kill the paper’s endorsements, according to the Times, but he refused.
A group of more than 400 staffers signed a letter in January urging Bezos to meet with the D.C. newsroom while he was in town for the inauguration, though no meeting occurred. Lewis has also not held a town hall since last summer, prompting outrage from staff.
The paper laid off nearly 100 people from its business side in January, and many of its top reporters have left for jobs at the Times, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal.
Bezos has remained tight-lipped about his plans to remake the Post, offering his only public remarks during a December interview at the Times's DealBook Summit.
“We saved the Washington Post once, and we’re going to save it a second time," he said.
