Anger mounts at Washington Post over leadership changes and CEO’s record

Below the archaic font of the Washington Post’s masthead, its motto is printed in italic flourish: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

The publication has been enveloped in its own black cloud this week, as a worsening crisis sparked fears among staff – and media commentators – about the new British senior executives at the heart of its operation.

The Post’s British chief executive, Sir William Lewis – former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who took up the role in January – blindsided journalists at the start of the week by announcing that the executive editor, Sally Buzbee, would be departing and one of his former lieutenants from his time as editor of the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Robert Winnett, will take the helm after the US election.

Lewis – brought in to revive the fortunes of the Post, which has seen sharp drops in readership and revenue – was already under scrutiny before this surprise appointment.

Questions have been raised in the American media about his own conduct, past and present, including accusations this week that he sought to kill negative stories about him.

As a pivotal US election looms, those anxieties are now blending with worry about whether something like what happened at the Daily Telegraph could be in store for the Post. A trusted paper once considered on the centre-right of politics, the Telegraph has tacked ever further to the fringes in recent years, embracing populist-leaning leaders and their ideas. These changes occurred after the departure of Lewis, but while Winnett was in a key role.

However, it was the role Lewis took after leaving the Telegraph that has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks.

Lewis was hired by Rupert Murdoch as Group General Manager of News Group Newspapers (NGN) in 2010 – and one of his key roles was managing the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.

This erupted when it emerged Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid had intercepted the voicemails of politicians, celebrities and members of the royal family.

NGN is currently being sued in the civil courts by Prince Harry and others over allegations of unlawful information-gathering – and legal documents that form part of the case reference Lewis.

In allegations that have not yet been tested at court and have previously been denied by Lewis, lawyers for the Prince and other claimants allege Lewis played a role in deleting millions of potentially incriminating emails.

Anger inside the Washington Post newsroom intensified late on Wednesday following a New York Times report that the outgoing editor Buzbee had clashed with Lewis in mid-May over whether to publish an article that referenced Lewis’s alleged role in the aftermath of the the hacking scandal. Lewis appeared to acknowledge speaking to Buzbee, but said he did not pressure her “in any way”. He said this in an email to a Post journalist.

One Post journalist said: “At the Washington Post, the publisher and CEO are forbidden from directing content in any way. That seems to be the standard in the UK, where some papers seem to be used as personal vendetta machines.”

A separate NPR report published on Thursday accused Lewis of trying to kill a similar story in December which included the accusation that he helped cover up the hacking scandal. The NPR reporter David Folkenflik said Lewis had offered him an exclusive interview about the Post’s future if he dropped the story.

The claim about Lewis prompted some Post journalists to consider whether it was time to make a direct plea about their concerns to the owner, Jeff Bezos, according to a source familiar with internal discussions.

Lewis called the NPR report a “non-story”.

Lewis and the Washington Post declined to comment to the Guardian.

This week’s announcement that Winnett, the deputy editor of the Telegraph for the past decade, would take over after the election has provoked further concerns about the import of journalistic practices deemed unacceptable in the US. (The WSJ veteran Matt Murray will run the newsroom until November.)

Winnett was involved in the reported payment of £110,000 ($140,000) for documents exposing British parliamentarians expenses. In the UK, the story led to a large number of resignations, several prosecutions and multiple journalism awards for Lewis and the Telegraph.

But a payment of that kind would be seen as a violation of US journalistic ethical codes.

One episode that has received far less attention involves allegations that, while working as a senior reporter at the Sunday Times, Winnett was involved in a covert operation in 2004 involving the trainee reporter Claire Newell, now investigations editor at the Telegraph.

According to an account in the book Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, the former Guardian investigative reporter who exposed the hacking scandal, Winnett and a colleague rented an office to manage Newell – then in her early 20s – who had signed up with a secretarial agency that supplied typists for government departments, and fed “secret documents” to the Sunday Times.

Newell was arrested, according to a Guardian account at the time, but never prosecuted. At the time the Sunday Times declined to comment, saying it never discussed the identity of sources. Newell did not respond to a recent request for comment.

Any such operation would not have been allowed at the Post, where guidelines state: “In gathering news, journalists will not misrepresent their identity or their occupation.”

Former colleagues of Winnett described him as a skillful operator, driven by the desire to dig up dirt, rather than a distinct ideology. “He’s a news person,” said one. “Someone you want in charge in a crisis.”

A colleague said he was a major loss to the Telegraph, adding: “He’s a very nice guy, extremely sharp, understated and a very good journalist.”

Several also noted the closeness between Lewis and Winnett, with one former colleague saying: “He’ll carry out whatever Will wants him to do.”

In an endorsement that would probably make Post journalists blanch, Winnett’s appointment was seen as a good thing by the rightwing nationalist and Trump ally Steve Bannon, who told the Guardian he was “a great pick to make the fucking thing more relevant and readable”.

The paper Winnett leaves behind has changed out of all recognition in recent years – a source of concern at the Post and elsewhere in the US, where the paper played an important role in holding Donald Trump to account during his first term, and is gearing up to cover a possible second Trump presidency.

Media observers and multiple former Telegraph journalists told the Guardian how it had moved away from its traditional middle-of-the-road conservatism to a far harder, often rightwing populist-leaning paper.

“In the past, a nice row between aristocrats, a gentle interview with a celebrity, or a good scoop would bag you a page lead,” said one former reporter. “Now, they are interested in culture wars and every specialist has to rile the readers up about something ‘woke’ on their beat.”

The Telegraph was fiercely pro-Brexit, while analysis from the climate website DeSmog found that 85% of its opinion pieces about the environment over a six-month period were “anti-green”. Headlines from comment pieces by Allister Heath, the editor of its Sunday edition, include: “We are the West’s last generation before the new Dark Age begins”. (Its stance does not appear to have harmed business – last year the Telegraph reported that its profits were up, and the publication easily met its goal of reaching one million subscriptions before the end of 2023.)

It was the Telegraph that enthusiastically championed the Conservative Liz Truss to become British prime minister in 2022 after the resignation of Boris Johnson.

A leader column in the paper predicted that “a party united around [her] extraordinarily exciting pro-growth and anti-inflation agenda could soon enjoy a resurgence in the polls.”

Within weeks, Truss had resigned, having crashed the economy with a calamitous and ridiculed budget. Her party’s poll ratings have not recovered since then.

Lewis, who last year received a knighthood from another ex-Telegraph star, the former British prime minister Boris Johnson, was blunt about the Post’s travails in a recent staff meeting.

According to a recording obtained by the New York Times, he said the publication had seen its audience drop 50% since 2020, and was facing losses of $70m over the last year.

“Let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around, right?” he said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.”

Inside the newsroom, journalists who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said it was seen as a “mask-off moment” in which Lewis, who had initially been welcomed and seen as a “cheerful and self-deprecating Brit” had suddenly turned hard-edged, in effect telling journalists “you guys have fucked up and I am here to save it”.

Lionel Barber, the former Financial Times editor, said Lewis was right to say something had gone “drastically wrong” at the Post and quick and decisive action was needed. “The issue – the problem – is the means,” he said.

“If you go all outsider, and try to bring the revolution in from the outside, you risk a very serious culture clash,” he said. The possible perception inside the newsroom – of two “redcoats” charging in, who might not have any deep understanding of Washington or even America – risked alienating staff.

The changing view of Lewis inside the Post was on display weeks ago when one columnist, speaking at a town hall meeting, publicly told Lewis readers would be “pissed” at the thought of paying for a diminished product. When Lewis asked whether the readers would be “American pissed” – meaning angry – or “British pissed” – meaning drunk – the joke fell flat. No one was laughing.