- Jeff Bezos is trying to end a financial catastrophe at The Washington Post, employing new leaders.
- But on Friday a crucial player, Robert Winnett, decided not to join and helm the newsroom after all.
- It followed a messy exhumation of his UK past, and that of his boss. Now Bezos needs a new plan.
Jeff Bezos has grand plans to remake The Washington Post. They seem to be blowing up in his face.
The incoming editor for the newsroom — Robert Winnett, the golden boy of the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper — pulled out of the job Friday morning.
He ditched the role after a slew of revelations about his own past as a writer in London and that of Will Lewis, the Washington Post publisher and old friend who tapped him for the top job.
The news was confirmed by Telegraph editor Chris Evans in a message to staff, seen by Business Insider. It said Winnett would stay there.
A recent furor over Winnett's hire revealed a profound culture clash between the high morals of the Post and the seemingly less scrupulous British outlets — the Telegraph, London's Sunday Times — where Lewis and Winnett cut their teeth.
And though Lewis remains in his post, US media elites are openly wondering whether he, too, will go. Even if he doesn't, Winnett's exit has blasted a hole in his plan and his credibility.
This also leaves Bezos with a problem. He hoped Lewis and Winnett could revamp the newsroom and give The Post new life.
The outlet, which Bezos bought in 2013, has been hemorrhaging money and readers.
Lewis recently told Post staff that it had lost half its readers since 2020 and last year lost more than a million dollars a week.
His promise was to connect with new readers, restructure the newsroom, and bring on Winnett to lead its central news-and-politics operation.
He touted Winnett as a leading light who could live up to the paper that broke Watergate.
In Britain, Winnett is indeed broadly admired, primarily for breaking what's widely known as the expenses scandal.
He revealed the widespread abuse of parliamentary expense accounts, upending the political establishment and forcing many lawmakers to quit.
That history landed very differently in the US, though — because The Telegraph paid for the information, with Winnett brokering a transfer of more than $100,000 to his source.
What Brits saw as a fair means to an end, many Americans saw as an aberration.
At the same time, a reexamination of Lewis' past emerged, prompting reports that he may have handled stolen material — albeit within Britain's media laws — and even overseen the destruction of evidence in the phone-hacking scandal that rocked Fleet Street in the early 2010s.
It's fair to say Lewis lost the newsroom, with the Post union complaining loudly, and (at least) one staffer describing to BI a growing unease at their incoming leadership.
Bezos threw his weight behind Lewis this week.
"We do need to change as a business," he wrote in an emphatic email, saying Lewis was still the man to get them there.
He would do it without diluting the Post's high standards, Bezos assured the newsroom.
But without Winnett, on whose shoulders that plan rested, Bezos needs a new solution, and fast.
