Washington Post employees plead for a summit with Jeff Bezos

Hundreds of employees at The Washington Post sent a letter to Jeff Bezos on Tuesday evening, asking the Amazon founder for a meeting amid widespread concern about the future of the newspaper.

The letter, which was signed by more than 400 employees, including many prominent reporters and editors, does not criticize anyone by name. But it says the signatories are broadly concerned with the leadership of the Post.

"We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave, with more departures imminent," the letter says.

A spokesperson for the Post declined to comment. A spokesperson for Bezos, who owns the Post, did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter, which was reported earlier by NPR, said that the concerns were unrelated to Bezos' recent decision to end its endorsement of presidential candidates, which the signatories recognized as "the owner's prerogative."

Instead, according to the letter, the concerns are about "retaining our competitive edge, restoring trust that has been lost and re-establishing a relationship with leadership based on open communication."

The company's chief executive, Will Lewis, has been the focus of widening discontent at the Post for months. The newsroom's top editor, Sally Buzbee, stepped down in June after he decided to reorganize the newsroom. Lewis' choice to replace her, Robert Winnett, withdrew from consideration after a staff backlash.

Several members of the Post's opinion staff resigned from the editorial board after the decision to end presidential endorsements, and the Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist quit after a cartoon that depicted Bezos genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald Trump was killed. The Post has also seen a significant loss in subscriptions.

In the past several weeks, several reporters, including political reporters Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer, have left or are leaving for publications including The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal. Others left for The New York Times, including Tyler Pager, who is joining as a White House reporter, and Matea Gold, who is a senior editor in the Times' Washington bureau.

The letter concludes by asking Bezos to visit the Post's offices to meet with the newspaper's staff. He made a similar trip in 2023, amid widespread discontent with Fred Ryan, the former publisher of the Post. Ryan stepped down later that year.