William Lewis, a reporter-turned-executive who spent years working in British media and for Rupert Murdoch-owned companies, has been named the CEO and publisher of The Washington Post.
As CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal from 2014 to 2020, Lewis was credited with increasing the Journal’s digital subscriber base.
In an email to staff late Saturday, Post owner Jeff Bezos cited Lewis’s background as both a journalist and executive in making him a “strong fit” for the job.
After leaving Dow Jones, Lewis, 54, co-founded the News Movement, which focuses on delivering nonpartisan news to younger audiences on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social platforms.
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| William Lewis |
In 2010, he joined the Murdoch-owned News Corp. and the following year was tasked with helping to run a committee created to address the company’s phone-hacking and police bribery scandal — the fallout of which led to criminal charges and the closure of the News of the World tabloid.
Lewis takes over during a tumultuous time for The Post, which has experienced a drop-off in both audience and subscribers. Executives are offering buyouts across the company in an effort to reduce its head count by about 10 percent; the newsroom is expected to shrink to about 940 journalists, and The Post is projected to end the year taking a $100 million loss.
He replaces Fred Ryan, who stepped down earlier this year after overseeing most of The Post’s decade of rapid growth since it was purchased by Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
But like much of the media industry, The Post saw its business decline after Trump left office and the pandemic subsided.
Lewis left Dow Jones around the same time. During his tenure, the Journal tripled its digital subscribers to 1.93 million and the company boosted revenue through elite business offerings, the newspaper reported at the time.
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