But his call to Mr. Murray shows how Mr. Bezos\u2019 approach changed as the company\u2019s fortunes fell in recent years. Dissatisfied by expanding losses and dwindling readership, Mr. Bezos is demanding that The Post embrace some of the same ideas that brought him riches at Amazon, including a focus on data and efficiency, according to interviews with more than two dozen people with knowledge of his actions at the company, all of whom would speak only on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bezos stays out of the paper\u2019s day-to-day operations, as he always has. He has not shown up in the newsroom since 2023. But he has dipped in more forcefully in the past two years, resulting in a series of jarring upheavals in strategy and leadership at one of the country\u2019s most decorated news organizations.<\/p>\n
Even as he pushed the company for more accountability, Mr. Bezos had until recently taken little public responsibility himself for the problems under his watch, including the tumultuous tenure of Mr. Lewis, that contributed to an exodus of talent from the newsroom and readership declines. He has insisted that he does not want to sell the company, but also wants to see it perform better.<\/p>\n
The newsroom has shrunk by nearly half over the past two years, to about the size it was when he bought it. Mr. Lewis departed days after widespread cuts were made in February. What remains are questions about whether Mr. Bezos\u2019 strategy will stop The Post\u2019s downward spiral or accelerate it.<\/p>\n
Some critics of Mr. Bezos\u2019 actions at The Post have accused him of trying to curry favor with President Trump to support his other companies. He is the executive chairman of Amazon, the main source of his $234 billion fortune; owns and is deeply involved in the rocket company Blue Origin; and recently created an A.I. start-up, Project Prometheus, where he is co-chief executive.<\/p>\n
Although he has expressed public optimism about Mr. Trump, he has told many people at the paper that his goal is the same as always: for The Post to pay for itself. He has not inserted himself into The Post\u2019s news coverage of the president, according to a dozen people with knowledge of his interactions with the newsroom, and its reporters have aggressively covered Mr. Trump\u2019s campaign and administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cChange was necessary to meet our challenges, modernize and advance our overall mission,\u201d The Post said in a statement. \u201cWe have an owner who believes that our authoritative journalism is critical to our democracy, and he wants The Washington Post to be successful. We must listen to data from our audience in order to be relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
In early February, a few months after Mr. Bezos persuaded him to stay, Mr. Murray oversaw the cuts they had discussed, laying off roughly 350 of the paper\u2019s 800 journalists. In a meeting with the newsroom, Mr. Murray acknowledged there was \u201ca major cost-savings target that we had to hit.\u201d He then emphasized the importance of \u201cusing data intelligently\u201d to inform The Post\u2019s decisions, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.<\/p>\n
Jeff D\u2019Onofrio, the company\u2019s chief financial officer, whom Mr. Bezos named as Mr. Lewis\u2019s replacement as chief executive, bluntly described the company\u2019s situation at another meeting that month with a line that could have been pulled from an Amazon strategy memo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncreased costs and decreases in output,\u201d Mr. D\u2019Onofrio said, according to the recording, \u201cthat\u2019s resulted in a doubling of costs for story-units since 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leadership Overhauls<\/p>\n
Problems at The Post started several<\/a> years ago, when its audience diminished after expanding during the first Trump administration and the Covid-19 pandemic. It would be more than a year before Mr. Bezos, who was dividing his time among Amazon, Blue Origin and his newfound lavish lifestyle<\/a>, signaled that he recognized the problem.<\/p>\n He visited<\/a> the newsroom in January 2023, not long after The Post\u2019s top editor at the time, Sally Buzbee, alerted him to rising concern in the newsroom over the direction of the business, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion. He met with many of the paper\u2019s top journalists, several of whom, like Ms. Buzbee, expressed concerns about Fred Ryan, the company\u2019s longtime chief executive.<\/p>\n A couple of months later, after a round of layoffs and increased public attention on The Post\u2019s business woes<\/a>, Mr. Bezos joined a video call with Gerry Cardinale, the founder of the investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, and Jeff Zucker, the former chief executive of CNN and one of Mr. Cardinale\u2019s fellow investors. As part of a wide-ranging conversation, the pair took Mr. Bezos\u2019 temperature on selling them a stake in the company, according to three people familiar with the conversation.<\/p>\n Mr. Bezos never showed any interest in selling \u2014 but not long after, he made a big change.<\/p>\n In June, Mr. Bezos announced<\/a> that he was replacing Mr. Ryan with Patty Stonesifer, a longtime Amazon board member and one of Mr. Bezos\u2019 closest advisers. He said she would run the company temporarily while leading the search for a permanent chief executive. After speaking with Post journalists, she also floated the idea of creating a board of advisers for the newspaper. Mr. Bezos rejected the suggestion, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.<\/p>\n The chief executive search soon narrowed to Mr. Lewis, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, part of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s media empire, and Josh Steiner, a media and finance executive who previously worked at Bloomberg.<\/p>\n Mr. Lewis was the front-runner, but a cloud hung over him because of his involvement in the cleanup of a years-old phone-hacking scandal at Mr. Murdoch\u2019s British newspapers. Mr. Lewis has denied any wrongdoing, and Ms. Stonesifer concluded he was fit for the job after speaking to journalists and media executives who knew Mr. Lewis and his work, according to two people familiar with the decision. A dinner with Mr. Bezos at his mansion in Washington sealed the deal.<\/p>\n One of Mr. Lewis\u2019s marquee initiatives was to create an experimental \u201cthird newsroom\u201d to spur innovation at The Post, a move that required a reshuffling of news leadership. Mr. Lewis pledged to involve Ms. Buzbee in hiring decisions, according to a person with knowledge of their interactions.<\/p>\n But without consulting Ms. Buzbee, the person said, Mr. Lewis chose a former colleague to take her current job and planned to have her manage the so-called third newsroom instead. Mr. Lewis did not comment for this article.<\/p>\n A frustrated Ms. Buzbee talked to Mr. Bezos, who urged her to stay at The Post while also praising Mr. Lewis\u2019s strategic acumen. She left the company not long after.<\/p>\n In her place, Mr. Murray, a former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, stepped in.<\/p>\n A Single Opinion<\/p>\n In late September 2024, Mr. Bezos met with the leadership of The Post\u2019s opinion department at his sprawling estate near Miami. With the presidential election on the horizon, he appeared primed to assert himself, as owners typically do on the opinion side in American newspapering.<\/p>\n Mr. Bezos outlined his political and economic beliefs, which boiled down to a mix of libertarian and pro-business policies, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. He also wondered aloud whether the paper should stop endorsing candidates in presidential elections.<\/p>\n Both changes would reverse decades of tradition at the newspaper, whose editorial board had regularly endorsed Democratic candidates. He offered a blunt response when David Shipley, the opinion editor, noted that changing the editorial ideology could turn off some subscribers.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d he said, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, he ended presidential endorsements, effectively killing a draft editorial that encouraged readers to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump\u2019s Democratic opponent.<\/p>\n Despite a reader uproar, including thousands of canceled subscriptions<\/a>, Mr. Bezos suggested even more changes at a December meeting with The Post\u2019s leadership in New York: Only views in line with his support of personal freedom and free markets would be welcome in the opinion section, which has long published columnists and guest writers with a variety of views.<\/p>\n At another point, he expressed enthusiasm about the commentary published by The Free Press, a news and opinion site founded by the journalists Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles and Suzy Weiss, and that month had dinner with Bari Weiss and Ms. Bowles in New York at the upscale Indian restaurant Bungalow.<\/p>\n In January, he traveled to Washington and was assigned a seat onstage near Mr. Trump at his inauguration.<\/p>\n
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