The Washington Post’s newsroom is reportedly in turmoil following the sudden exit of executive editor Sally Buzbee and amid plans to split the Post’s newsroom into three smaller divisions.

A few thoughts on all the moves:

First, Sally Buzbee was an uninspired choice as editor of the Washington Post. Blame Jeff Bezos. When he bought the newspaper in 2013, Bezos inherited the legendary Marty Baron as editor. So Buzbee was Bezos’s first executive-editor selection after Baron retired in 2021. And …she was from the wire services. Nothing against wire services. But their mindset is to cover breaking stories, not digging and coming up with original hard-hitting stories. AP and Reuters etc. claim they do indeed dig, and oftentimes they do, but their primary mission, as demanded by their customers (i.e., paying news outlets) is to cover breaking stories to be shared with their members. And that’s what Buzbee provided. The result: The Post became the Anywhere USA Post, not the Washington Post. Sure, the Post won some Pulitzers under Buzbee. And the newsroom was expanded. But the Post also became almost unbearably boring under Buzbee. In recent years, its website usually entailed a few innocuous breaking stories that everyone else had – and then high-up fluff/lifestyle stories. No wonder its circulation plummeted under Buzbee. Bezos, a techno retailer at heart, got what he wanted in Buzbee. And he paid the price.

Second, I’m not impressed with Bezos’s post-Buzbee moves either. Why bring in former WSJ and Fleet Street veterans? It’s really not complicated what the Post needs to cover, as proven by its surge in subscriptions during the Trump years: hard-hitting news emerging from the nation’s political capital. The NYT and Boston Globe managed to hang on to their Trump-era surge in online subscribers. Why not the Post? Why reinvent the newsroom, as the new CEO Will Lewis seems intent on doing?

Third, Buzbee’s ultimate replacement, Robert Winnett, is known as a a low-key Fleet Street editor who loves scoops. Fine. But why go to Britain for hard-news talent? 

Fourth, Bezos is floundering big-time.