Jeff Bezos' tenure as Washington Post owner in spotlight as paper grapples with low morale, staffer exodus

Fox News

13-05-2025

Jeff Bezos is facing a new round of scrutiny as the billionaire owner of The Washington Post and whether he bears any responsibility for the struggles the paper is facing 12 years after he bought it.
Bezos was the subject of a lengthy story published Monday in The New Yorker with the headline, "Is Jeff Bezos selling out the Washington Post?"
The piece offered a timeline beginning with Bezos' $250 million purchase of The Post from the Graham family dynasty in 2013, noting the paper's leadership changes between Marty Baron, Sally Buzbee and current interim executive editor Matt Murray, revisiting various newsroom controversies over the years and Bezos' apparent chumminess with President Donald Trump since the election.
One Post staffer from the story told New Yorker's Clare Malone how "out of touch" Bezos seemed during one-on-one sit-downs with a group of The Post's journalists in January 2023.
"He is isolated, and he hasn't done the work to engage and be a hands-on owner," the journalist told Malone. "If you are going to own a media property right now, you need to be all in and understand the landscape."
However, what's widely seen as a stain on Bezos' tenure as The Post's owner was his unilateral decision to quash the paper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just weeks before the 2024 election.
"The non-endorsement shook a lot of people because it was done in such a ham-handed fashion and that was all Bezos," one Post staffer told Fox News Digital. "No one would have cared if he'd announced the policy two years earlier."
That move by Bezos prompted resignations and more than 250,000 canceled subscriptions from outraged liberal readers. It remains unclear if The Post is able to recover from the long-lasting damage that it caused, the staffer said.
In the months since, The Post has faced an unprecedented exodus of its top talent, like national editor Philip Rucker, who went to CNN, managing editor Matea Gold, who went to The New York Times, and top reporters like Josh Dawsey, who went to The Wall Street Journal, as well as Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, both who fled to The Atlantic.
Last week, Post reporter Aaron Blake was poached by Rucker, now serving as CNN's senior vice president of editorial strategy and news.
"Aaron is a real loss but a smart move by Rucker -- CNN will make him a star," the Post staffer told Fox News Digital.
While many Post employees landed jobs at other outlets, others left in protest of Bezos, including columnists Jannifer Rubin and Eugene Robinson. In January, cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after her bosses refused to publish a cartoon that depicted Bezos and others groveling at the feet of then-President-elect Trump. Incidentally, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize last week for "delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."
In February, Post opinion editor David Shipley stepped down after Bezos ordered columns regularly defending "personal liberties and free markets" and banning viewpoints that oppose them. Veteran Post columnist Ruth Marcus also resigned after her piece calling out Bezos' policy was killed. The move by Bezos, similar to his non-endorsement decision, reportedly cost the paper another 250,000 paid subscribers.
Morale has never been lower at The Post, but blame is not pointed at Bezos. Will Lewis, Bezos' hand-picked CEO and publisher of The Post, has had a rocky tenure since he began leading the paper in 2024.
Last June, Lewis irked his staff with a blunt message he had during a meeting, telling them "People are not reading your stuff" as he lamented financial losses and a shrinking audience.
"Will has been a ghost since July. He couldn't even find the time to show up for Pulitzer Day," the Post staffer said.
A spokesperson for The Washington Post pushed back, telling Fox News Digital, "Lewis respects the line of the newsroom but regularly attends news and opinion meetings to show support and encouragement in appropriate ways."
The New Yorker piece reported staffers attributed their departures from The Post to Lewis' "lack of a discernible plan for the paper" in exit interviews.
"The idea that the newsroom is the reason for the Post's struggles is unfair," one former top editor told The New Yorker. "The newsroom is not always its own best friend, but Will somehow convinced Jeff that it is the problem, when really there is no business strategy."
Despite the current woes The Post faces, the staffer who spoke with Fox News Digital is not completely discouraged, citing the two Pulitzer Prizes the paper nabbed last week and the various scoops it has landed while covering the Trump administration. The insider also credited Bezos for doubling the size of the paper's staff and the resources the billionaire owner has provided, calling it "huge."
"I have nothing but thanks and gratitude for Bezos and how he rescued a paper that was spiraling down and probably would've been a shadow now, if not gone," the Post staffer told Fox News Digital. "I blame him for being an absent owner and letting [former Post publisher) Fred Ryan fail to capitalize on the big boost in circulation we got in Trump's first term. Lewis is failing fast, but Bezos again seems too distracted to notice."
"You have to keep in mind how bad things were when Bezos bought The Post. We were rock bottom. We haven't fallen that far yet," they added.