Another day, another terrible story involving Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis.
The New York Times’ Justin Scheck and Jo Becker report that Lewis and incoming Post editor Robert Winnett “used fraudulently obtained phone and company records in newspaper articles” when both worked in London. This was according to someone who the Times said was a former colleague, a published account of a private investigator and an analysis of newspaper archives.
Scheck and Becker wrote that Lewis assigned one of the articles in 2004 when he was business editor of The Sunday Times and another article was written by Winnett. The Times wrote, “The use of deception, hacking and fraud is at the heart of a long-running British newspaper scandal, one that toppled a major tabloid in 2010 and led to years of lawsuits by celebrities who said that reporters improperly obtained their personal documents and voice mail messages.”
All along, Lewis has said that his only involvement with the phone-hacking scandal was to look into it after it became public. “But,” the Times wrote, “a former Sunday Times reporter said on Friday that Mr. Lewis had personally assigned him to write an article in 2004 using phone records that the reporter understood to have been obtained through hacking.”
A second article from 2002 had Winnett’s byline and a private investigator who worked for The Sunday Times, according to The New York Times, “later publicly acknowledged using deception to land the materials.”
There’s more.
The New York Times reported that their review of Lewis’ career “also raised new questions about his decision in 2009, as editor of The Daily Telegraph in Britain, to pay more than 100,000 pounds for information from a source. Paying for information is prohibited in most American newsrooms.”
The Times wrote, “In a meeting with Post journalists in November, Mr. Lewis defended the payments, saying that the money had been put into an escrow account to protect a source. But the consultant who brokered the deal said in a recent interview that there had been no escrow account and that he had doled out the money to sources himself.”
This is just the latest in two weeks’ worth of awful attention the Post is receiving following executive editor Sally Buzbee leaving the paper. Lewis replaced Buzbee with Winnett and another one of Lewis’ former colleagues, Matt Murray.
Politico Playbook’s Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade report that the latest Times story has lowered morale even more inside the Post, and raised more questions about Lewis’ leadership. They report that one high-profile Post staffer texted them, “I have asked my friends and family to stop sending me links to stories about Will Lewis. Every scoop is worse than the last. I can’t focus on my work when each headline heightens what’s beginning to feel like an existential crisis.”
Another Post reporter told Politico Playbook, “People are like, ‘Do we really want to work here anymore?’ People are freaked out. They, for the first time or in a long time, are considering exiting. I don’t think people want to be there if this is what it’s going to be like.”
After each one of those stories, the same question comes up: Can Lewis survive as publisher? In the end, that will be up to owner Jeff Bezos, who hasn’t said anything publicly or internally at the Post.
A Post reporter told Politico Playbook, “Bezos has been a very good owner of The Post up until this point. And now we have a sort of a moment. … Can you really stick with this guy who is doing all of this? If Jeff is sticking with him, then, like, what can you do? You have to make your own decisions.”
Here’s more on everything from NPR’s David Folkenflik, including additional reporting: “New Washington Post chiefs can’t shake their past in London.”
Veteran media reporter Brian Stelter tweeted that senior Post staffers got together Sunday night for a party to celebrate Buzbee. Gee, think they will have any tea to spill?
Stelter also tweeted, “Another Wash Post tidbit: Will Lewis was going to fly to France for this week’s Cannes Lions ad festival, but he’s no longer attending, for obvious reasons.”
Oh, and then The Washington Post dropped this story Sunday night from Isaac Stanley-Becker, Sarah Ellison, Greg Miller and Aaron C. Davis about Winnett: “Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting.”
I’m sure there will be more on this as the week goes on. Yikes, what a mess at the Post.
This piece originally appeared in The Poynter Report, our daily newsletter for everyone who cares about the media. Subscribe to The Poynter Report here.
