Washington Post CEO Will Lewis was a no-show at the company’s Wednesday meeting in which management began laying off more than 300 journalists and and shuttered the paper’s sports desk. Current and former employees noticed Lewis’ absence.
Lewis did, however, pop up thousands of miles away in San Francisco, just before Sunday’s Super Bowl, an appearance that also caught the attention of journalists.
Reporter Nicki Jhabvala, a Post alum who now covers the Washington Commanders for the Athletic, posted a photo of Lewis to X on Thursday that showed him walking the carpet at the NFL Honors award show.
The revelation prompted an immediate outcry among Post alums and laid-off staffers, who tore into the Post publisher for being missing in action as the paper undergoes painful cuts and embarks on a “strategic reset.”
“I literally just wrote 4,000 words on the murder at the Washington Post, and even I don’t have words for this,” wrote Atlantic staff writer Ashley Parker, who published a piece on Wednesday decrying the layoffs as a “murder,” on X. “At least words that wouldn’t violate every self-respecting social media policy, including that of my employer.”
Lewis, along with owner Jeff Bezos, have come under intensifying criticism for their stewardship of the Post, including major missteps like spiking an endorsement of Kamala Harris that led to hundreds of thousands of canceled subscriptions.
The Post did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Jeff Stein, the Post’s chief economics reporter, shared an X post from former Post reporter Lizzie Johnson, who was laid off while in Ukraine as she covered the war-torn nation. “Thinking about the contrast here,” he wrote.
“The paper no longer has a sports department, but Will Lewis is in California walking the NFL red carpet?” Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Dawsey, another Post alum, wrote on X.
“Tone deaf, morally bankrupt leadership,” Times reporter Greg Jaffe, another Post alum, wrote on X.
Atlantic staff writer Shane Harris tagged Post owner Jeff Bezos, another silent voice in the layoffs, in an X post: “Hey, @JeffBezos: Missed one in the layoffs.”
Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that Lewis has routinely gone to the Super Bowl since he joined the Post in 2024. (Lewis’ trip to the Super Bowl last year came up in Bryan Curtis’ searing Ringer piece this week on the killing of the sports department.)
Byers also reported that executive editor Matt Murray, who claimed to Fox News that Lewis missed the meeting because he had “a lot of things to tend to” on Wednesday, did not know Lewis had gone to the event and learned from the photo shared on X.
Athletic staff writer Sally Jenkins, who was named a Pulitzer finalist in 2020 for her sports columns at the Post, ripped into the reported ignorance. “Dumb and Dumber,” she wrote on X. “Could there be more evidence of clownery?”
