The Washington Post’s Incoming Editor Backs Away From Role Amid Controversy

Etan Vlessing
·2 min read

Robert Winnett will not become editor of The Washington Post, after all, the newspaper’s embattled CEO and publisher Will Lewis told staffers Friday morning.

“It is with regret that I share with you that Robert Winnett has withdrawn from the position of editor at The Washington Post. Rob has my greatest respect and is an incredibly talented editor and journalist,” Lewis said in a “newsroom leadership update” posted to The Washington Post’s comms blog.

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Later this year, after the 2024 U.S. presidential election in November, Winnett — a veteran of the U.K.’s Telegraph Media Group and a former colleague of Lewis in London — was to have become editor of The Washington Post. That move followed Sally Buzbee leaving as executive editor of the iconic newspaper in early June.

And as part of a planned newsroom restructuring, Matt Murray, former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, would replace Buzbee until Winnett would take on a newly created editor role. Also Friday, Daily Telegraph editor Chris Evans in an internal memo to his own newspaper staff obtained by The Hollywood Reporter announced: “I’m pleased to report that Rob Winnett has decided to stay with us. As you all know, he’s a talented chap and their loss is our gain.”

Winnett’s dashed plans to cross the Atlantic were apparently upended by recent allegations of journalistic ethical lapses by himself and Lewis when they worked together in the U.K. That includes allegedly using hacked phone and company records as part of their reporting.

The British press has received widespread scrutiny and become the subject of court cases over its ethical practices, including the infamous News International phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of British tabloid newspaper The News of the World in 2011.

Prince Harry, actor Hugh Grant and others have claimed executives at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. knew the breadth of the company’s use of illegal news-gathering tactics and conspired to destroy evidence as the phone-hacking scandal exploded over a decade ago.

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