British journalist Robert Winnett, set to join The Washington Post as its next editor following the November US election, has withdrawn from the position, the outlet reported on Friday. Winnett will remain at the Daily Telegraph in the UK.

The announcement comes amid days of internal strife over Winnett’s alleged past practices as well as those of the new corporate chief, Will Lewis, responsible for his hiring.

If Americans know anything about British journalism, it’s that they do it differently over there — usually in ways that wouldn’t pass American ethical standards. Brits pay for stories. British papers don’t separate news from opinion. British reporters hack phones.

These supposed transatlantic differences have been raised frequently amid the flurry of scrutiny on the journalistic and ethical track records of Washington Post publisher Will Lewis and Rob Winnett, a fellow Telegraph alum whom Lewis is bringing in to be Post editor.

American journalist Evan Gershkovich will stand trial in Russia on charges of spying for the CIA, prosecutors announced Thursday.

Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was arrested in March 2023 on what many in the West consider trumped-up charges by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repressive government.

It has been a very depressing week at the Washington Post. On Sunday night, the newspaper announced that executive editor Sally Buzbee had stepped down after three years atop the masthead. Buzbee’s resignation was clearly linked to new CEO and publisher Will Lewis’ decision to drastically reorganize the Post newsroom while installing two former colleagues in high-ranking editorial roles at the paper. In a newsroom meeting on Monday, Lewis defended his hires and spared no words in assessing the paper’s reported financial dilemma. “We are losing large amounts of money.

Will Lewis, publisher of The Washington Post, is not having a good week.

And you can’t help but wonder what his long-term future is at a job he has held for only a few months.

Lewis was already in the middle of chaos when the week began. Post executive editor Sally Buzbee resigned abruptly over the weekend as Lewis announced a major shakeup in how the newsroom would operate going forward.

In late April, Will Lewis arrived at the former Georgetown home of Katharine Graham.

Graham was the most revered publisher in the Washington Post’s history, who steered the newspaper through Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.

Lewis is the Post’s recently installed CEO and publisher, and a bit of a fish out of water — a British former Rupert Murdoch man running a newspaper built around values at odds with Fleet Street.

“We are losing large amounts of money. People are not reading your stuff. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

So said Will Lewis, the publisher of The Washington Post, in a widely reported exchange with angry staffers upset about major restructuring at the 147-year-old publication.

He’s 100% accurate. The Post is losing large amounts of money — to the tune of $77 million in 2023 alone. 

And, yes, people are largely not reading its stuff anymore.

Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis had a blunt message for his staff during a tense meeting following the sudden ouster of executive editor Sally Buzbee, according to the paper's own reporting. 

"We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around," Lewis told the paper. "We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore."

Sally Buzzbee has stepped down as Executive Editor of The Washington Post, the newspaper announced Sunday night.

Buzzbee, who has led the Post since 2021, will be immediately replaced by Matt Murray, the former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal, until the 2024 election.

The Washington Post revealed on Saturday that the outlet initially passed on the Samuel Alito flag story in 2021 after its former Supreme Court reporter had a confrontation over it with the justice's wife.

"The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors," the Washington Post report said, citing a spokesperson for the paper. "It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics."