Washington Post 'Rudderless'

Bezos, Lewis, Matt Murray

2025 has already become a rough year for The Washington Post as its yearslong identity crisis and financial struggles continue to plague the Jeff Bezos-owned paper ahead of the second Trump presidency. 

While newsroom tensions and money woes have been persistent, they were taken to new heights following Bezos' appointment of Will Lewis as The Post's publisher and CEO. Tasked to revitalize the paper's cratering business model, Lewis had some choice words for his staff in a June 2024 meeting following the ousting of its executive editor Sally Buzbee. 

"We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff ... I can’t sugarcoat it anymore," Lewis said at the time. 

Fast-forward to 2025, and Lewis has alienated himself from his newsroom.

"The company feels rudderless right now," one staffer told Fox News Digital. "Will Lewis has basically disappeared since his infamous 'no one's reading your stuff' meeting from last year, he hasn't named a permanent executive editor, if he has a business plan, he hasn't communicated it to his employees, or the public, or to anyone, it seems, except [Puck reporter] Dylan Byers… with no clarity on when and in what direction the company is headed."

The staffer fumed while speculating that Lewis had been the source of the reporting of Puck's Dylan Byers, telling Fox News Digital "that's apparently how Lewis prefers to communicate with his staff."

"In the last six months, maybe more, we have heard from Will Lewis exactly once -- in his bizarrely passive-aggressive email after the election announcing the return to office mandate," the staffer said.