Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The Washington Post since 2021, has stepped down, publisher and CEO William Lewis announced late Sunday.
She will be replaced by Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, Lewis said. After the presidential election in November, Robert Winnett, most recently the deputy editor of Telegraph Media Group, will take over in a newly created role of editor. Both have previously worked with Lewis.
The abrupt shake-up at the top of The Post — which Lewis announced alongside ambitious plans for a new division of the newsroom — is the biggest move by far from the British-born journalist since he took over as CEO in January.
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Buzbee, previously the executive editor of the Associated Press, was the first woman to lead the nearly 150-year-old newspaper. She could not be immediately reached for comment.
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The announcement — in the final months of a presidential election campaign, traditionally a marquee news event for The Post — surprised many in the newsroom, which has also been consumed with coverage of the unprecedented guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s New York hush money criminal trial and the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Buzbee appeared onstage at a companywide meeting less than two weeks ago where Lewis told staff about a plan to create new tiers of subscription offerings, in a bid to enhance revenue.
She had been hired in May 2021 by The Post’s then-publisher and CEO Fred Ryan, who stepped down almost a year ago after a rare round of layoffs, public clashes with the newsroom’s union and sharp declines in revenue and subscriptions.
When Lewis was named as the next publisher late last year, he told The Post he was “a huge fan” of Buzbee, whom he had gotten to know when he was a member of the AP’s board, and that he was “100 percent” committed to her remaining in the job.
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Lewis also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a statement released by the company, he said: “Sally is an incredible leader and a supremely talented media executive who will be sorely missed. I wish her all the best going forward.”
Buzbee’s departure comes at an already tumultuous time for The Post, which lost $77 million over the past year, Lewis recently acknowledged, and offered buyouts to a couple hundred staffers at the end of 2023 to bring costs in line.
In his Sunday night email to staff, Lewis also announced plans to launch “a new division of the newsroom” later this year focused on “service and social media journalism” and aimed at audiences who “want to consume and pay for news differently from traditional offerings.”
The aim, he added, “is to give the millions of Americans — who feel traditional news is not for them but still want to be kept informed — compelling, exciting and accurate news where they are and in the style that they want.”
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Murray will oversee this new division after the election, Lewis said. Winnett, meanwhile, will oversee “core coverage areas,” such as politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features. David Shipley will remain the head of The Post’s opinions section, which has traditionally operated separately from news.
Murray was the top editor of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones when Lewis served as the Journal’s publisher and Dow Jones’s CEO.
In recent months, Lewis has also announced the hiring of other former Dow Jones colleagues into top corporate jobs at The Post, including Karl Wells as chief growth officer and Suzi Watford as chief strategy officer.
Winnett is less well known in U.S. media circles than Murray, but he also has a history with Lewis, who was editor of London’s Daily Telegraph when he hired Winnett in 2007 as a senior reporter for the paper. Both had worked together previously at London’s Sunday Times.
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As a reporter, Winnett won acclaim for his part in breaking a major story about the misuse of expense accounts by members of Parliament, an exposé that triggered resignations and criminal probes.
Murray, meanwhile, was himself on the other side of an abrupt newsroom shake-up just a year and a half ago.
A 29-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal, he was named editor in chief in 2018. During his tenure, the Journal won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and produced some groundbreaking investigative series. Digital subscriptions also rose during his time at the helm.
But in late 2022, he was replaced by Emma Tucker, a British journalist from the Sunday Times of London with close ties to the inner circle of the Journal’s controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch.
Buzbee’s tenure coincided with a difficult one for much of the news media, which saw a drop-off in readership and revenue. She oversaw The Post’s newsroom during a period of record hiring, but also some high-profile departures, as well as layoffs and buyouts. Buzbee shuttered The Post’s weekly magazine, and the paper stopped publishing its Outlook section, dedicated to commentary and analysis.
Yet Buzbee is credited with launching newsroom departments focused on climate and well-being coverage. She also oversaw the newsroom when it won several Pulitzers, including the award for public service for coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath. Last month, the National staff won a Pulitzer for a project on the politics and impact of the AR-15 rifle.
