Shake-up at The Washington Post leaves paper's position uncertain

Major changes are happening at one of America's newspapers of record. The Washington Post announced in early June that its executive editor, Sally Buzbee, would be departing the company. The announcement came from the Post's publisher and CEO, William Lewis, who joined the paper in 2023. 

Lewis also announced Buzbee's replacement, and it raised some eyebrows across the media landscape. Matt Murray, the former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, will temporarily serve as the Post's executive editor until the presidential election this November. Following the election, Robert Winnett, the current deputy editor of the British newspaper the Telegraph, will replace Murray as the Post's permanent executive editor. In addition, the Post will be launching a new "service and social media journalism" division that offers a differing perspective from traditional media. 

The Journal and the Telegraph are considered among the most conservative mainstream newspapers in the U.S. and U.K., respectively. As such, the announcement that their editors will lead the Post, a mostly liberal outlet, reportedly caused concerns that the newsroom could end up seeing a rightward shift. But others are skeptical that a significant ideological move will occur.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

'A dive headlong into the abyss' 

It is "certainly fair to question why the Post — with its very American, play-it-straight self-conception — will soon hand its core news product to a longtime editor at the Bible of British Conservatism (with a big C)," said Jon Allsop for the Columbia Journalism Review. The question also remains as to how a "Brit immersed in that country's distinctive political culture will adapt to America's, despite the superficial similarities between the two that culture warriors — including at The Telegraph — like to echo and invoke." 

When Winnett takes over in November, experts say some of the practices that are commonplace at his conservative Telegraph will be contrary to American media. This includes a "payment of a six-figure sum to obtain the documents crucial to [an] expenses investigation, [which] runs counter to the more stringent reporting ethics followed by American news organizations," said Michael M. Grynbaum for The New York Times. This could prove to foster a change in how the Post gathers and reports the news.  

Criticism has been levied toward publisher Lewis himself, who has allegedly worked to kill multiple stories that he was involved in. During a recent newsroom meeting, Post investigative reporter expressed dismay that Lewis had "chosen people with a very different culture from the Washington Post," according to an account of the meeting from the Guardian.

As a result of all of this, "you understand my skepticism that Buzbee's ouster will improve the quality of the Washington Post's work," said Drew Magary for SFGate. Instead, the changes feel "very much like a dive headlong into the abyss," and it feels like the outlet is transforming into "one that wants to give op-ed space to Joe Rogan," said Magary. The Post was "one of the few remaining legacy pubs that consistently seemed both willing and able to serve as a check on an increasingly deranged political system," but "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to say that."

Douse the thought of a right-wing Post with flame retardant

It is unlikely that the team Lewis has built will completely "Wall Street Journal-ify and Rupert Murdoch-ize the Washington Post," said Jack Shafer for Politico, referring to the media magnate behind conservative titans like Fox News, the Journal and the New York Post. Some are predicting that the "remodeled newspaper will be guided by British attitude and experience" and that the "new, Brit-heavy, Murdoch-pedigreed leadership will turn the Post into a fiery right-wing tablet," but you should "douse that thought with flame retardant."

"None of the new Lewis crew seem to tilt that way, not even Murray when he ran the news pages of the Journal," Shafer said of the Post possibly shifting to the right. He noted that under Murray's leadership, the conservative Journal was the outlet that broke the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump story in 2018. 

If anything, the Post itself is less likely to be damaged by these changes than local news outlets, some experts say. Any "efforts to make organizations like the Post and the Times more attractive to subscribers may contribute to the trends hurting local news," Paul Farhi, a recently retired media reporter at the Post, said to The Associated Press.