The Washington Submit headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
Graeme Sloan | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
Washington Submit writer and CEO Will Lewis is leaving the newspaper, the corporate introduced on Saturday after finishing up widespread layoffs this week.
“Throughout my tenure, troublesome choices have been taken with the intention to make sure the sustainable way forward for The Submit so it may well for a few years forward publish high-quality nonpartisan information to hundreds of thousands of consumers every day,” Lewis wrote in a message to workers that was shared on-line by the newspaper’s White Home bureau chief, Matt Viser.
Lewis, a former Dow Jones chief govt and writer of the Wall Avenue Journal, was appointed to the function on the Washington Submit in 2023 because the newspaper was struggling steep monetary losses. He took over from Fred Ryan, who had served as writer and CEO for almost a decade.
Jeff D’Onofrio, chief monetary officer of the newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos, will function performing writer and CEO, the Submit stated. He joined the newspaper final June after serving in varied roles at Google and Yahoo, amongst different corporations.
“Buyer knowledge will drive our choices, sharpening our edge in delivering what’s Most worthy to our audiences,” D’Onofrio wrote on Saturday in an e-mail to Submit staffers.
Unions representing Submit staff stated Lewis’ departure was crucial.
“Will Lewis’s exit is lengthy overdue,” The Washington Submit Guild stated in a press release. “His legacy would be the tried destruction of an important American journalism establishment. Nevertheless it’s not too late to avoid wasting the Submit. Jeff Bezos should instantly rescind these layoffs or promote the paper to somebody keen to spend money on its future.”
Bezos, who purchased the newspaper in 2013, characterised the management change as an “extraordinary alternative” for the newspaper.
“The Submit has an important journalistic mission and a unprecedented alternative,” Bezos stated, in response to the Submit. “Each day our readers give us a roadmap to success.”
The departure of Lewis got here days after the Submit minimize about one-third of its staff in a transfer that affected all departments on the newspaper. He was criticized for his absence through the layoffs on Wednesday, which the newspaper’s former govt editor, Marty Baron, described as “among the many darkest days” within the newspaper’s historical past.
Throughout his time on the Submit, Lewis oversaw waves of workers reductions and needed to cope with the lack of a whole bunch of 1000’s of subscribers after the newspaper stopped endorsing U.S. presidential candidates and shifted its opinion part’s emphasis to a libertarian bent.
Lewis’ Submit tenure was rocky even earlier than the subscriber losses.
After a 2024 disagreement with then-executive editor Sally Buzbee led to her departure, Lewis confronted a newsroom outcry over his try to rent British journalist and former colleague Robert Winnett, who was linked to a phone-hacking controversy that additionally concerned Lewis. In the meantime, Lewis’ most ballyhooed initiative, a so-called third newsroom, by no means got here to fruition.
Former Wall Avenue Journal editor Matt Murray ultimately was named the everlasting alternative for Buzbee, who’s now Reuters’ information editor for the USA and Canada.
