Jeff Bezos supports embattled Washington Post chief in memo to staff

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has made his first public comments since a leadership crisis shook the newspaper, telling senior staff that its business practices needed to change but its journalistic standards would remain high.

The billionaire founder of Amazon issued a memo on Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times, in response to a growing backlash against Will Lewis, the chief executive he picked to turn around the lossmaking Washington publication. Bezos sent the memo via an email titled “Quality Journalism” to a dozen senior editors at The Post.

“It can’t be business as usual at The Post. The world is evolving rapidly and we do need to change as a business,” wrote Bezos, who acquired the title for $250mn more than a decade ago.

“You also know our standards at The Post have always been very high. That can’t change — and it won’t,” he wrote.

The memo amounted to an effort to quell rising opposition to Lewis and one of two new editors he picked to run its newsroom, who have been dogged by allegations of questionable ethical practices dating to their days in the cut-throat world of British journalism. It also appeared intended to signal Bezos’s support for Lewis, who was copied in on the email.

“You have my full commitment on maintaining the quality, ethics, and standards we all believe in,” Bezos said.

Under Bezos’s ownership, The Post enjoyed a renaissance during the rise of Donald Trump, adding millions of subscribers. But it has struggled to maintain momentum, losing half of its audience since the 2020 election and posting a $77mn loss last year.

The Post’s newsroom has revolted against Lewis, a British former Rupert Murdoch lieutenant that Bezos appointed as publisher last year. A former Financial Times journalist, Lewis served as chief executive of Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal from 2014 to 2020, a period of revenue and readership growth for the organisation.

Earlier this month, Lewis abruptly replaced executive editor Sally Buzbee with his former colleagues, sparking a crisis in confidence over his leadership that has continued to gain steam over the past few weeks.

Media organisations have been delving into Lewis’s involvement in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal that captivated the UK more than a decade ago, prompting questions about Lewis’s ethics and whether he is fit to lead one of America’s most-storied news institutions.

The Post on Sunday published an investigation into Lewis and Robert Winnett, his chosen incoming editor, and has appointed former senior editor Cameron Barr to oversee coverage of Lewis. “We cover The Washington Post independently, rigorously and fairly. The publisher has no involvement in or influence on our reporting,” a representative said in a statement.

Prominent US journalists such as Nicholas Kristof have openly questioned whether Lewis can carry on as publisher and chief of The Post. However, that decision resides solely with Bezos, who was photographed this week in Mykonos, Greece, with his fiancée Lauren Sánchez.