Newly named Washington Post editor decides not to take job after backlash, will stay in Britain
The Washington Post says that Robert Winnett, who had been named to take over the organization's core newsroom functions later this year, will not take the job after all
NEW YORK — The Washington Post's new editor Robert Winnett never made it to his job, withdrawing Friday and deciding to stay in England in another upheaval at a news outlet where a reorganization plan has gone disastrously wrong.
He'd been the subject of several published reports — including one in the newsroom that he sought to lead — that questioned whether he followed an ethical compass foreign to American journalists. The Post's CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, announced Winnett's decision in a note to staff, and said a recruitment firm would be immediately hired to search for a replacement.
The financially struggling Post had announced Winnett would take over as editor of the core newsroom functions after November's presidential election, while it was also setting up a “third newsroom” devoted to finding new ways for its journalism to make money.
Three weeks ago, then-executive editor Sally Buzbee said that she would quit rather than take a demotion to head this revenue-enhancement effort. Besides Winnett's hiring, former Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray was brought on as her interim replacement and future leader of the “third newsroom.”
Since then, several published reports had raised questions about the journalistic ethics of Lewis and Winnett stemming from their work in England. For example, both men worked together in a series of scoops about extravagant spending by British politicians fueled by information that they paid a data information company for — a practice frowned upon by American journalists.
The New York Times wrote that both
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