On Sunday night, minutes after Will Lewis, the CEO of The Washington Post, informed employees that the newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, was being replaced, managers gathered on a conference call to hear from their boss one last time.

Buzbee told them that a new organizational structure created by Lewis — effectively splitting the Post newsroom and opinion section into three smaller divisions — didn’t work for her. She added that Lewis was pushing for aggressive moves to turn around the Post, and asked editors to reserve judgment for now.

“I would have preferred to stay to help us get through this period, but it just got to the point where it wasn’t possible,” Buzbee said, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The stunning call — which some attendees described as funereal — added to the growing tension between the newsroom and Lewis, who has set about remaking the Post since he started in January.

Many reporters and editors figured that Buzbee would remain in place until at least the presidential election in November. Just two weeks ago, Lewis and Buzbee had addressed the Post’s staff together at a long-awaited all-hands meeting in which Lewis discussed his vision for the Post.

Reorganization plan

When Lewis revealed his plan to separate the Post’s newsroom into segments, he said she could run one of them, according to a person with knowledge of the interactions. Buzbee chafed at the idea, according to two people familiar with her thinking.

The reorganization would have been an effective demotion for Buzbee, who had been in charge of all news content at the Post. The structure adds a division focused on service and social media journalism under the supervision of a new editor, which would have pulled a large portion of the Post’s editorial output out from under Buzbee’s supervision.

On Sunday, Lewis told Buzbee that he was appointing another person to her job, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.

Lewis is temporarily replacing Buzbee with Matt Murray, the former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal. Murray will run the Post’s newsroom as executive editor through the election, at which point he will transition to run the division focused on service and social media journalism. Lewis had been considering hiring Murray for a senior editorial role at the Post for more than a month, according to a person with knowledge of their discussions.

A new editor, Robert Winnett, will take over the company’s core coverage areas after the election. For the past decade, Winnett has run news operations at The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

David Shipley will continue to run the Post’s opinion section. All three — Winnett, Murray and Shipley — will report directly to Lewis.

A spokesperson for the Post declined to say whether Jeff Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, was aware of or approved the leadership changes announced Sunday evening.

Losing readers

Like most news organizations, the Post has lost readers — a decline more acute because the Washington-based outlet boomed with the interest in politics during the Trump administration. The Post’s website had 101 million unique visitors a month in 2020, and had dropped to 50 million at the end of 2023. The Post lost a reported $77 million last year.

Lewis told staff members on Monday that “I’m not interested in managing decline. I’m interested in growth,” according to a person who attended the meeting. The new publisher also bluntly told staffers that “people are not reading your stuff. We need to take decisive action.”

The new division designed to attract new customers — the Post called it a “third newsroom” — is steeped in some mystery. While the Post at one time headquartered the people running its digital products in a separate building, for several years it has integrated that and social media into the regular newsroom, as have many organizations.

Newsroom discord

Murray, 58, was introduced to the Post’s newsroom Monday, in a town-hall meeting that kicked off with a long round of applause for Buzbee, according to several people in attendance. Under her leadership, the Post greatly expanded its editing ranks and received six Pulitzer Prizes, three of them this year.

During the meeting Monday, the executives were grilled by reporters at the Post on the lack of diversity in the hires replacing Buzbee — Murray, Winnett and Shipley are white men.

According to a recording obtained by The New York Times, one of the Post’s star political reporters, Ashley Parker, asked how the newspaper had arrived at its decision, adding that one skeptical interpretation might be that Lewis was simply hiring his associates to help run the Post.

Lewis is in many ways orchestrating a reunion with people that he worked with during earlier chapters of his career. As the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, he appointed Murray to the top editorial position at the paper in 2018. And he worked with Winnett for years, first at The Sunday Times and then at The Telegraph.

“When you were here before, you talked very movingly about how you care about diversity — and people talk about diversity — but then when push comes to shove, they say, ‘Well, I looked around and I couldn’t find anyone,’” Parker said.

In response, Murray said that diversity would be a “constant commitment” at the Post, adding that he had “the most diverse masthead that the Journal had ever had” during his years as the top editor of the Journal.

Murray wasted no time familiarizing himself with the Post’s newsroom. On Monday, he began taking meetings in Buzbee’s old office on the seventh floor, hours after her sudden departure. Her nameplate has already been removed.

Election coverage

In a statement Monday, The Washington Post Guild said that it was “troubled” by Buzbee’s sudden departure and the lack of diversity in the Post’s top ranks.

The editorial change-up comes at a delicate time for the Post. The newspaper is preparing to cover the homestretch of the presidential election, including the nominating conventions in Chicago and Milwaukee this summer. It is highly unusual to replace the top editor of a major U.S. newspaper during this period.

At the all-hands meeting two weeks ago, Lewis rattled off a list of priorities that included “build it,” “fix it” and “say it.” Lewis revealed that the Post was in dire straits, with more than $70 million in losses over the past year and audience declines of 50% over the same period.

Near the end of the meeting Monday, Kainaz Amaria, the Post’s national visual enterprise editor, said that Buzbee’s treatment “didn’t feel fair,” adding that the circumstances of her exit could make it difficult to trust new leadership.

“To start off like this is very difficult,” Amaria said, according to the recording.

Associated Press reports were used in this story.