Washington Post CEO Will Lewis is planning some big moves, says the New York Times. According to their sources, the Bezos-owned Post is set to go on a deal-making spree directed by Lewis, who has reportedly been given a mandate to grow the newspaper, including through acquisitions. The move would bring the Post up to speed with its competitors like the Times, who bought the sports magazine The Athletic in 2022 for $550 million in an all-cash deal. According to their sources, the goal is for the paper to grow the overall business’s subscriber base so that it is “insulated from the vagaries of the news cycle, which can wax and wane throughout the year.”
The article goes on to say that the Post’s chief growth officer gave a presentation on the ongoing efforts last Tuesday, reportedly telling the staff in attendance that “this is about getting our house in order.” Some of the changes already underway to meet this goal involve adjustments to the paywall in order to get more free readers to subscribe, as well as a crackdown on 160,000 free subscriptions currently offered to federal offices and employees. According to slides from the same presentation, the Post has added over 4,000 subscriptions this year through September, the first time that the company has grown since 2021.
Another part of the strategy already underway is the launching of WP intelligence, a new product that follows in the footsteps of its rivals like Politico Pro, offering deeper coverage of industries for interested professionals.
Despite the silver linings of good news, times are still tough at the Washington Post overall. The paper lost over $100 million last year, and cut 240 positions through buyouts to stem the losses. Arc XP, a division of the company that makes and sells publishing software to other media outlets, cut 54 positions last month, a full 25% of its workforce.
Will Lewis also faces tensions internally after a widely-publicized conflict with the Post’s former executive editor, Sally Buzbee. The two clashed as Lewis took helm of the paper, with Buzbee leaving after she refused to go along with his restructuring of the Post’s newsrooms, which involved bringing in his former colleagues from the Wall Street Journal and the London-based Telegraph. Buzbee had also butted heads with Lewis as the Post was reporting on a civil suit regarding the phone hacking scandal involving British newspapers a decade ago, which alleges that Lewis used fraudulent and unethical methods to obtain information for articles during his stint at the Sunday Times.
Buzbee left the paper in June, reportedly in the face of an imminent demotion. A series of articles reporting low morale in the newsroom soon followed, to the point that some columns even predicted his ouster. Lewis’ new deal-making push may be a fight for his own survival at the Post.
