Days after joining the exodus from the Washington Post by accepting the paper’s buyout offer to journalists who didn’t want to take part in its “reinvention journey,” Glenn Kessler revealed that the Post’s publisher once asked him what they should “do to appeal more to Fox News viewers.”
Kessler, who spent nearly three decades with the Washington Post and was the publication’s fact-checker since 2011, took to Substack Wednesday to explain why he decided to leave the paper. And like many of the veteran columnists and reporters who have ditched the Post recently, he pointed to the shifting editorial policies implemented by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos and the paper’s beleaguered CEO and publisher, Will Lewis.
“But now, working at The Post feels like being on the Titanic after it struck an iceberg — drifting aimlessly as it sank, with not enough lifeboats for everyone,” Kessler wrote. “The Carpathia (i.e., Bezos) appears too far away and too distracted to help. And the captain is shouting commands that the solution is a different ship.”
Beginning with Bezos’ decision to block the editorial board’s presidential endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris, the newspaper has been bleeding talent (and losing subscriptions) for months. It only grew worse in February when the owner – who had been currying favor with Donald Trump since before the election – mandated that the opinion section pivot to defending personal liberties and the free market.
That move to make the opinion section libertarian, if not outright conservative, which Trump himself celebrated, resulted in the editorial page’s top editor announcing his resignation. Other columnists would soon follow, citing the “significant shift” in the opinion section’s mission while accusing the paper of killing their attempts to write about the directive.
Bezos and Lewis would eventually bring on Economist correspondent Adam O’Neal to helm the opinion page, who introduced himself to staffers with a somewhat cringe-inducing video and pledged to make the section “unapologetically patriotic” and optimistic “about the future of this country.” At the same time, the paper started offering a “voluntary separation program” to opinion employees. This was followed by another buyout offer to news staffers with over a decade of service, along with those on the video and copy desks.
Lewis, however, seemed to open the floodgates last month when he sent out a memo describing the transformation of the paper’s opinion pages as a “reinvention journey” for the organization as a whole. Saying that “those who do not feel aligned” with that plan “should reflect on that,” Lewis essentially gave his staff an ultimatum. And many of them answered by taking the buyout, including Kessler.
In his Substack post, Kessler reflected on a meeting he had with Lewis shortly after Bezos had made him the publisher of the Post last year. During the April 2024 sitdown, in which Kessler was looking to pitch his idea about the paper bringing back an ombudsman, he claimed that Lewis had other things on his mind.
“During our discussion, he asked me: ‘What should The Post do to appeal more to Fox News viewers?’” Kessler noted, adding that Lewis continued to circle back to the topic.
“I used to cover diplomacy so I knew how to keep a poker face even as the hair on the back of my neck prickled. ‘We have to remain true to our journalistic principles,’ I said. ‘We have to tell the truth.’ I paused, and added, ‘They may not like that, because it would conflict with what they’ve been hearing.’” Kessler stated.
“I’m not sure he appreciated that answer, because he asked me the same question two more times,” he continued. “Each time, I gave the same response, though I added that exclusive, compelling articles were the best way to attract readers.”
Kessler pointed out that they never did discuss his proposal to bring back an ombudsman, asserting that Lewis instead asked him to send a follow-up email.
“I wasn’t sure what was odder — the Fox News questions or the fact that the publisher could spend an hour just shooting the breeze with a reporter,” Kessler observed. “Shouldn’t he be busy?”
In the end, Kessler stated, Lewis would become largely an absentee newsroom leader after he came under renewed fire for his actions leading the British tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News founder. After pushing out executive editor Sally Buzbee, Lewis attempted to replace her with his friend Robert Winnett, who withdrew following his own controversy.
Lewis, meanwhile, would essentially go into hiding at that point while also delivering an edict that the Post would no longer cover itself – which came on the heels of the paper’s reporters investigating the allegations that he helped cover up Murdoch’s phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. Kessler noted that a second meeting with Lewis never happened.
“Still, the question about Fox News gnawed at me. I admire many Fox News reporters, but the network’s main impact comes from its opinionated, late-night conservative hosts who wholeheartedly support Republicans,” he added. “The implication was that The Post website might need to lean right. I told my two immediate editors about my conversation with Lewis; they have since left The Post.”
Kessler also stated that when he decided to take the voluntary buyout, he told executive editor Matt Murray he’d be willing to stick around for two months to help keep The Fact Checker afloat until a new author took over. However, his proposal was apparently met with deaf ears.
“To me, the episode demonstrated that there is no vision, no game plan, and no commitment to build on existing traffic,” Kessler wrote. “Instead, the buyouts have removed some of The Post’s biggest traffic generators — and I don’t see a strategy to replace what has been lost. Lewis invested time and resources in creating what he called ‘a third newsroom’ — his one big idea — but the effort was abruptly dropped last month, and the manager who had led it also took the buyout.”
He also insisted that the exodus would have been greater if it weren’t for simple economics.
“I do not know a single person who left The Post because they did not embrace the organization’s ‘reinvention’ as it was a chimera,” Kessler said. “Many more Post veterans would have taken the buyout if they could — but they couldn’t line up an equivalent job fast enough, or they were in that uncomfortable age zone of 56 to 64, where Medicare is not available and a potential employer might conclude you don’t have many productive years left.”
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