Where There's a Will, There's a Waay Serious Problem

Welcome to the Weekend Gene Pool. For a change, I am going to begin with the question for you to answer and for me to use next week: Tell us about a time something happened at work that convinced you that your employer was going down the tubes — or seriously going down a bad, bad path. More on this below.

Good. Now, not unconnectedly, let’s talk about The Washington Post. This column is brought to you by …

This is about a man named Will Lewis, pictured above, the publisher and CEO of The Washington Post who was appointed by Jeff Bezos a year and a half ago. He’s a categorical catastrophe.

(suggestion: if you are reading this in an email, click on the headline so you get the latest amended, emended and addended version.)

I still stay in touch with many friends at all levels of The Post and I do not know of a single writer or editor who likes Will Lewis, though that is almost immaterial. What is important is that I also do not know of a single writer or editor who respects him. What is most important is that I do not know of a single writer or editor who trusts him.

And he doesn’t like them, either, ever since he closed down an all-hands meeting in 2024 and left the room fuming because reporters were asking him sharply pointed questions, which is something good reporters are trained to do. Ever since then, he has distanced himself from the newsroom, which is not sound management strategy. It is a signal of contempt. It is as though your boss decided to move your desk into the bathroom.

Will Lewis is a Brit, the same guy who lied about his role in helping Rupert Murdoch cover up the disastrous phone hacking scandal, the same guy who later demanded that The Post not write about that shitty role of his. I don’t know what your work background is — perhaps you work in an industry where a bit of bloated, ham-handed power-imposed self-interest is accepted with a sigh and an eye-roll, but journalism is composed of highly skeptical people whose lives have been devoted to exposing things like bloated, ham-handed power-imposed self-interest, and whose radar for it is supersensitive and whose distaste for it is palpable.

Last week, Mr. Lewis excreted one of the worst memos-to-staff ever issued by a management. And I am not just talking about journalism management. I’d wager the staff of, say, Sikorsky Helicopters has never seen anything this foul.

I am going to print the memo here verbatim — it isn’t very long — so you can inhale its stench and bathe in its detestable putrescence.

“Over the last year, we have embarked on a significant reinvention journey to make The Washington Post more appealing to, and trusted by, today’s audiences. We are reimagining our Opinion offering to champion timeless American values; tackling traditional subscription fatigue head-on through flexible access; launching new, engaging product improvements such as From the Source; and embracing AI rapidly across all of our workflows.

“But we are far from done. The moment demands that we continue to rethink all aspects of our organization and business to maximize our impact. If we want to reconnect with our audience and continue to defend democracy, more changes at The Post will be necessary. And to succeed, we need to be united as a team with a strong belief and passion in where we are heading.”

I understand and respect, however, that our chosen path is not for everyone. That’s exactly why we introduced a voluntary separation program. As we continue in this new direction I want to ask those who do not feel aligned with the company’s new plan to reflect on that. The VSP is designed to support you in making that decision, give you the ability to weigh your options thoughtfully and with less concern about financial consequences. And if you think it’s time to move on to a new chapter, the VSP helps you take that new step with more security.

Regardless of what you decide, I want to thank you all for everything you have done for this organization. If you choose to move away from The Post, thank you for all your contributions, and I truly wish you the best of luck. If you believe in the next chapter, I am excited for the work ahead of us.

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Let’s parse this a bit, shall we?

This memo has been described by others as a “my way or the highway” screed, and that is true, but that is not its principal flaw; leaders are permitted to be arrogantly decisive and expect obedience. Ben Bradlee was, and did. The problem here is much deeper. It is about transcendent dishonesty.

The fact is, Will Lewis has one overarching message he wishes to deliver, like a ball peen hammer to the head: Leave. If you are currently a principled journalist working for The Post, a person who values integrity, we don’t want you here anymore, whining about what we are doing. (He didn’t really have to make this threat. Everyone good who is still there — a vastly reduced number over the last year — is already in full abandon-ship mode, largely because of disgust with the spineless disingenuous dissolute disarray that is Will Lewis.)

The “voluntary separation program,” which is marketing-type jargon for “buyout offers” is, I have been told, about to cause some of the most illustrious and valuable people to leap at the chance to get the hell out. Dan Balz, the dean of the politics staff and an intelligent, deeply knowledgable voice that has guided political coverage for decades. Hank Stuever, the blindingly brilliant Features editor who improves every story he works on, and leads a staff that adores him. David Von Drehle, the smartest person at The Post, vastly talented as an Opinions editor, an essayist of extraordinary depth and elegance, and a historian who brings that knowledge, and voice, to everything he writes. Joel Achenbach, a polymath who is among of the best feature writers I’ve ever worked with. Mike Semel, the highly regarded deputy managing editor. At least two seasoned obit writers — fleeing, I presume, after management started running waay fewer obits of local people because these tributes to fascinating non-celebrities apparently do not generate enough money.

This is the sort of desperation brain-drain that happens in a hospital emergency room to save an accident victim from dying of intracranial pressure. (Sorry. Not all my similes are gems.)

In losing these people, The Post has not just squandered much of their top talent — they are losing all institutional memory. This will will result in their becoming a leadership team of amnesiacs.

Those who will choose to stay — perhaps because they have no other immediate options — are nervous. They know that Lewis and his sycophants are such weasels that they might eliminate their position anyway the day after the offer ends.

The sleazy nature of this memo is not lost on a single journalist. They have covered this kind of dishonest corporate communication all their lives. You can take nothing at face value, because everything is run through the bullshit machine first.

But it is translatable.

“We are reimagining our Opinion offering to champion timeless American values” means “we are becoming an opinions organ of the far right.”

“We have embarked on a significant reinvention journey to make The Washington Post more appealing to, and trusted by, today’s audiences” means: “Since we took over we have lost literally hundreds of thousands of subscribers because we are no longer appealing to, and trusted by, today’s audiences. This is likely irreversible. So the best way to deal with that is to just nakedly and shamelessly lie about it, a la Donald Trump. It works!”

“We are launching new, engaging product improvements such as From the Source; and embracing AI rapidly across all of our workflows.”

This one takes some explanation. Here Lewis is defiantly doubling down on a drastic mistake he ordered that further alienated the staff. “From the Source” is a feature, currently being Beta tested on only climate stories, in which sources named in the story are shown the story in advance and invited to append comments on it, available with a click. Writers HATE HATE HATE this, and for very good reason. They wrote the story only after they had reported fairly and determined the objective truth — that is their job. This gives disgruntled sources an opportunity to undermine and muddle the message and distort the truth, and mess up a carefully laid out narrative. Initial tests have actually established this — sources will often use their comments to flog other projects of their own and issue other extraneous self-serving crap.

The only thing writers hate more than From The Source is the widespread reliance on AI. Do you want an AI newspaper?

“If we want to reconnect with our audience and continue to defend democracy, more changes at The Post will be necessary. And to succeed, we need to be united as a team with a strong belief and passion in where we are heading.”

Again, an explanation. This is very telling. Lewis does not elaborate on “where we are heading.” He does not even hint at it. So he is asking people to pledge their loyalty to him, not to any coherent plan. To blindly promise fealty, or begone. This requires trust in him. Good luck with that, Will.

“Regardless of what you decide, I want to thank you all for everything you have done for this organization. If you choose to move away from The Post, thank you for all your contributions, and I truly wish you the best of luck” means “Go fuck yourself. Leave.”

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Okay, then. Back to the question of the day.

When I was working at the Miami Herald in the 1980s, things were pretty fat. We had money. We had subscribers. We were producing a high quality product, but there were rumblings of cuts to come. One day we got visited by the head of the corporation that owned our paper and others — the president of Knight-Ridder, Inc. He was there to announce a new slogan for all the papers they ran: “Customer obsession.”

Sitting around the table, all the journalists Knew. Right away. We knew we were in for a hellish ride downward. In 200 years of American newspaper journalism, no one had ever called readers “customers.” They were “readers.” The switch seems negligible but was not. The guy was reverting to corporate-speak, telling us that keeping readers would now involve giving them what they want, not what they need to know. And what they want is often fluff and pablum.

And that’s what happened over the ensuing years, as circulation accordingly and deservedly plummeted.

Again, your challenge this week:

Tell us about a time something happened at work that convinced you that your employer was going down the tubes — or seriously going down a bad, bad path.

Send em here:

Okay, then. Today’s mercifully extraneous Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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