The director of The Washington PostSally Buzbee, will leave the position after three years in it and will be temporarily replaced by Matt Murray, responsible until last year for The Wall Street Journal, as the historic head of the American capital has suddenly announced. No reason has been given for the journalist’s departure, which comes just half a year after the appointment of a new CEO and editor, William Lewis.
Murray will be at the helm of the newspaper that revealed the Watergate scandal in 1973 until next November’s presidential election. He will then take over as current deputy director of the British conservative media group TelegraphRobert Winnett.
“I am deeply honored to join such a distinguished journalistic institution, with its long and rich history of memorable and impactful reporting, and I want to thank Sally for her great leadership,” said the new interim director in a statement. So far, her predecessor has not made any statements regarding her departure. “Sally is an incredible leader and a supremely talented journalism executive, who will be greatly missed,” Lewis noted for her part. “I wish him the best from now on.”
Buzbee, the first woman editor of the capital’s newspaper, had arrived at Washington Post in 2021 to replace Martin Baron, a journalistic legend himself who had run the newspaper for eight years since Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, bought it in 2013 for $250 million. Until then he had been in charge of the Associated Press news agency.
The replacement of the director just five months before elections that are promised to be fundamental for the future of the country – and its journalism – is the most significant personnel movement in the newspaper founded 150 years ago since landing at Lewis’ company. coming, like Winnett, from the group Telegraph. Lewis has also worked on the Wall Street Journalfrom where he has recruited Murray.
His departure is announced at stormy times for the legendary newspaper, a mandatory reference in any course on the history of reporting. Winner of numerous awards throughout its history, and the only one who can boast of having triggered the resignation of an American president (Richard Nixon, following the Watergate scandal), he had experienced years of glory and expansion of his editorial team during the mandate of Republican Donald Trump, when under Baron’s leadership he adopted his current motto “democracy dies in darkness.”
But since the arrival of Democrat Joe Biden to the White House, and the inauguration of Buzbee’s newspaper, the post – like other media – had registered a decline in its income statements and a collapse in the interest of its audience. Something that in turn generated the departure of some of its most recognized names and internal fights on very public occasions.
With the new director at the helm, the newspaper continued to accumulate recognition. During the Buzbee era he won six Pulitzer Prizes, three of them in the most recent edition, announced in May. But last year he lost $77 million, Lewis had previously acknowledged. His audience had halved in just four years. At the end of 2023 the post had offered a redundancy plan to nearly two hundred of its workers, in an attempt to cut costs.
In an email sent to the newspaper’s workers to inform them of the changes, Lewis also announces that he plans to launch a “new area in the newsroom” this year, which will focus on “service journalism and social networks.” That new area will target readers who “want to consume and pay for news differently than traditional offerings,” and will focus on offering more audiovisual stories, leveraging artificial intelligence and exploring flexible payment methods, including premium subscriptions. According to Lewis, it is “a definitive step to move away from the one-size-fits-all model and closer to our readers wherever they are.”
The idea, the CEO pointed out, is “to give the millions of Americans – who feel that they are not interested in traditional news, but who do want to be informed – reliable, interesting and attractive news, wherever they are and in the style they want. they want”.
Murray will be in charge of that new area once the November elections have been held. Winnett, with a decade of experience leading the Daily Telegraph and its sister header on Sundays, the Sunday Telegraph, He will be responsible for the newspaper’s “core areas of coverage,” including politics, investigative journalism, economics, technology, sports and reporting.
The head of the opinion area, David Shipley, will remain in his position. Traditionally, as in other independent media, this section operates separately from the rest of the editorial team.
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