The editor-in-chief has quit, and the successor has jumped ship. Now, The Washington Post's Will Lewis is also being questioned following revelations about dubious methods.
The Washington Post will have to continue searching for a new editor-in-chief.
The venerable newspaper's first choice, Briton Robert Winnett, has withdrawn even before taking up the post, the newspaper itself writes, and now the ground is shaking beneath CEO and publisher Will Lewis.
Like many other newspapers, The Washington Post is struggling with declining revenues, and Lewis's solution to find more readers was to establish a "third editorial team" for new journalism, intended to be launched after the November election.
But the publisher did not want his then editor-in-chief at the helm and instead pushed out Sally Buzbee in early June, who chose to resign rather than take a step down in the hierarchy.
Questionable methods
The solution became Robert Winnett, currently at The Daily Telegraph in London and previously at The Sunday Times. And it is his questionable methods there that prompted journalists in Washington to protest so loudly that Winnett never even crossed the Atlantic.
He is accused in an article in his intended new newspaper of having hired an actor who obtained confidential information through lies – an action the American journalists did not want to see in a future boss.
"The Washington Post upholds the highest possible ethical standards in its journalism, which all employees are expected to adhere to", a spokesperson for the newspaper stated this week.
Further problems for Will Lewis are that he has also been drawn into the controversy, as a friend and former workmate of Winnett, but above all because he, according to The New York Times, in 2004 asked a reporter to write an article based on information obtained from illegal phone recordings.
Bezos to the rescue
Lewis – who was handpicked by owner Jeff Bezos and took up his post at the turn of the year – has therefore also received criticism from his journalists, many of them renowned veterans.
One of them is David Maraniss, a double Pulitzer Prize winner, who has been vocal on social media, forcing Bezos himself to speak out and explain that change is necessary for the newspaper's survival.
The problem is integrity, not change, Maraniss responded according to AP.
Winnett, on the other hand, is staying on at The Telegraph, whose employees received a letter on Friday in which editor Chris Evans wrote that "he is a talented guy, their loss is our gain".
