Washington Post turmoil reels in familiar faces
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Former Washington Post managing editor Kevin Merida was seen visiting the Post's headquarters and meeting with senior staff on June 5, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: Merida, who stepped down as executive editor of the Los Angeles Times in January, is one of several Post veterans in contact with the paper amid intensifying scrutiny of its new leadership.
State of play: Former senior managing editor Cameron Barr, who stepped down last year and has been on contract as a senior associate editor, is overseeing the Post's coverage of new publisher and CEO Will Lewis.
- A source at the Post said Barr's responsibilities were not announced internally and that newsroom employees heard the news through NPR media reporter David Folkenflik.
- Barr has been assisting the Post with investigative stories since the spring.
- Another source familiar with Merida's visit said his trip to D.C. was planned before the recent turmoil began to unfold.
The latest: Until now, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had stayed quiet about the upheaval — leaving Post employees on edge about what comes next for the iconic newspaper and its election-year leadership.
- In a memo to newsroom leadership on Tuesday, Bezos vowed that "the journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change."
- "You have my full commitment on maintaining the quality, ethics, and standards we all believe in," Bezos wrote.
Zoom out: The drama surrounding Lewis — who has come under fire for his ambitious newsroom restructuring and alleged involvement in a decades-old British phone hacking scandal — has begun to eat at employee morale.
- "I think we're all just exhausted," one newsroom employee told Axios.
- Slack discussions among Washington Post Guild employees have been very emotional, according to sources.
- "It's all-consuming," said one employee.
Between the lines: Newsroom employees Axios has spoken to fear the Post's appearance in daily headlines is distracting journalists from doing their best work.
- Most recently, the New York Times reported that Lewis and his pick for incoming newsroom editor, Robert Winnett, used stolen phone and company records in articles for London's Sunday Times in the 2000s.
- The Post followed up with its own 3,000 word investigation exploring Winnett's journalistic record and contrasts between reporting ethics in the U.K. and the U.S.
- Those reports came on the heels of other stories from the Times and NPR suggesting that Lewis had tried to intervene in the Post's coverage about his involvement in the U.K. phone hacking scandal.
Lewis has denied any wrongdoing and pledged during employee listening sessions last week to "never interfere" in the Post's journalism.
The big picture: Internal frustration over the Lewis drama is the latest — but perhaps most significant — in a string of challenges the Post has faced over the last two years.
- With readership plummeting since the 2020 election, the Post shuttered its stand-alone print magazine in December 2022 and laid off magazine staffers as reports leaked out of its financial struggles.
- Layoffs accelerated in 2023 with cuts to the Post's gaming and kids sections. Later that year, longtime publisher Fred Ryan announced his departure and the Post offered voluntary buyouts in an effort to eliminate 240 jobs.
- Lewis started in January 2024 and delivered a presentation in May outlining his plan to divide the Post's editorial unit into three newsrooms. Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee resigned days later.
