On Saturday, the Washington Post announced that William Lewis, the former chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal has been named chief executive and publisher of the Washington Post.
In addition, the newspaper said it was projecting it would end the year with a $100 million loss, however the newspaper was looking to cut costs by offering buyouts across the company in an effort to reduce the workforce by roughly 10 percent, and reduce the headcount in the newsroom to about 940 journalists.
The appointment of Lewis comes as the industry is enduring a sluggish advertising market, reduced confidence in the news media as a whole, and the rise of generative AI technologies which will change how news is gathered, presented, and found by consumers.
As Lewis takes on his new position from January 2nd, he will replace Patty Stonesifer, who was appointed to interim chief executive in June. The owner of the Washington Post is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Reuters reported that in an October 10th email which was sent by Stonesifer to her staff, she said that following a review by her and her senior leadership, it was determined that the Post’s previous projections for traffic to the website, subscriptions, and growth in advertising for the past two years, as well as for 2024 were “overly optimistic” for reasons which are unclear.
Stonesifter replaced the previous CEO, Fred Ryan, who stepped away in August, after spending nine years as publisher and CEO.
Under the leadership of Ryan, the Post had seen subscriptions increase, it had won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, and seen the launch of the Arc XP cloud-based digital platform, which is used to deliver content to over 1,900 sites in 28 countries, according to a June report from the company.
In the article in which the Post covered the departure of Ryan, the newspaper reported that during his tenure, the newspaper transitioned from making most of its revenue from its print business when he took over in September of 2014, to acquiring the majority of its revenue from its digital business, with roughly 2.5 million digital subscribers.
