Washington Post Appoints William Lewis as CEO and Plans 10% Workforce Reduction

By Helen Coster

William Lewis, the former chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has been appointed as the chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post, as announced by the newspaper on Saturday.

The Washington Post is expected to conclude the year with a projected loss of $100 million. To manage costs, the company is offering buyouts aimed at reducing its workforce by approximately 10 percent, leading to a newsroom that may shrink to around 940 journalists.

Lewis’s appointment arrives at a challenging time for the media industry, which faces a sluggish advertising market, declining trust in news, and the rise of generative AI technologies that could significantly alter how audiences access and consume information.

He will officially assume his role on January 2, 2024, succeeding Patty Stonesifer, who stepped in as interim chief executive in June. The Post is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

In an email sent to staff on October 10 and reviewed by Reuters, Stonesifer communicated that after a comprehensive evaluation, she and senior leadership determined that previous forecasts for website traffic, subscriptions, and advertising growth had been "overly optimistic." The reasons behind the inaccuracies of those projections remain unclear.

Stonesifer took over after Fred Ryan, who left his position as publisher and CEO in August following a nine-year tenure.

During Ryan’s leadership, The Washington Post expanded its digital subscriptions, earned 13 Pulitzer Prizes, and launched the Arc XP cloud-based digital platform, which supports over 1,900 sites across 28 countries.

According to the Post, the majority of its revenue is now derived from its digital operations, with approximately 2.5 million digital subscribers. This marks a significant shift from the time Ryan was appointed in September 2014, when the bulk of the revenue was generated from print.