During his first nine months as publisher of the Washington Post, Will Lewis has dug himself into a dismaying number of scandals.

He fired Sally Buzbee, the editor he inherited from the previous publisher, on a Sunday night without much explanation. He is accused of orchestrating the cover-up of a phone-hacking scandal from his time working for Rupert Murdoch (and is currently the target of an investigation by British police into the matter). And he has repeatedly attempted to kill negative stories about his various scandals, including at his own paper and in a quid pro quo offer to NPR media reporter David Folkenflik.

With all of the turmoil and ethical doubts surrounding the man sitting atop one of the most prominent newspapers in the country, readers are rightly in search of a moral compass. Historically, that job would fall to the paper’s ombudsperson.

For much of its existence, the Post has employed an ombudsperson—an internal watchdog who writes a weekly column along with memos for staff. The person was responsible for identifying mistakes and holes in stories, as well as opportunities to improve. They also answered readers’ questions.

Late editorial page editor Fred Hiatt eliminated the position in 2013 and officially replaced it with a “reader representative” (though a self-appointed City Paper reporter attempted to keep the original tradition alive). 

Alison Coglianese became the Post’s reader representative in 2014 following a short stint by Doug Feaver; she was celebrated as an advocate for readers, but she did not write a regular column. She told Washingtonian in 2016 that her “interactions are more on a personal level as opposed to a public one.” 

But Coglianese quietly left the paper last year (neither she nor the Post could confirm when exactly) with no announcement from the Post, and editors have not hired a replacement. Coglianese declined to talk about internal deliberations regarding her authority or the hiring of a new reader representative; for some time, she ran a fashion blog, which hasn’t been updated since 2019.

Neither the Post’s spokesperson nor editor Matt Murray responded to requests for comment for this article.

“I can’t tell you one single thing that the reader representative did,” says Paul Farhi, the Post’s longtime media writer who left the paper during the massive staff buyout of 2023. 

Others provide similar assessments (though none blamed Coglianese) and suggest that it might be time to consider filling the ombudsperson’s empty chair.

“Having an ombudsman is very good PR for the paper,” Farhi adds. “It says, ‘We are an accountable institution, and we are strong enough to handle internal criticism.’” 

Liz Spayd, a former Post managing editor who became public editor for the New York Times and now teaches at Georgetown University, says that an ombudsperson who is truly empowered can push an outlet to be more forthcoming with embarrassing details.

“There is a lot of tea-leaf reading [at the Post] because there isn’t enough candor and forthrightness,” Spayd says. “The instinct is to hunker down and address things behind the scene.”

With such a need for an ombudsperson these days, it’s worth looking back at how the position has functioned.

Deborah Howell, who served as ombudsperson from 2005 to 2008, managed the heat directed at the Post (and at her) over their coverage of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who served nearly four years in prison for crimes related to a criminal lobbying scandal. Bill Green, who served as ombudsperson for one year starting in September of 1980, handled the delicate investigation of disgraced Post reporter Janet Cooke, who invented some of her news stories, including one about an 8-year-old addicted to heroin that was initially awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

During an interview on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, Michael Getler, another former Post ombudsperson, said the job serves readers: “I am independent of the newspaper. It’s painful sometimes to criticize the paper and raise issues that are difficult.”

The position was sacred to the Graham family, who owned the paper before selling it to Jeff Bezos in 2013. For decades, Post leadership, backed by Don Graham, believed that an ombudsperson gave readers a sense of ownership of the paper and added unique accountability to a news-gathering operation that sought to hold itself to a higher standard than others.

The Post’s former executive editor, Marty Baron, was not necessarily a fan of keeping an ombudsperson on staff. Baron told the last person to hold the job, Patrick Pexton, that the Post already attracts plenty of criticism, internal and external, and with a “competition for resources,” the internal critic could be the first on the chopping block.

Today, questions remain about Lewis and the allegations of dishonesty—old and new—that surround him.

Former editor Cameron Barr was brought out of retirement in Scotland to edit the Post’s news coverage of Lewis. But that team has gone dark since July, with no explanation for readers.

There are also unanswered questions about Lewis’ plan for remaking the Post newsroom. He announced that he wants to create a new newsroom focused on video stories, wants to send more paid newsletters, and wants the core newsroom to focus on politics, investigations, business, technology, sports, and features.

Still, the need for an ombudsperson existed before Lewis came along and extends beyond his baggage.

The Post hired Margaret Sullivan in 2016 after her stint as public editor of the New York Times—a different title for the same job. Some thought (hoped, perhaps) that Sullivan would function like an ombudsperson, but she was hired as a media reporter rather than an internal watchdog.

“Having an ombudsman restores confidence,” Sullivan tells City Paper. “The Post should bring it back.”

David Ignatius, who writes about foreign policy for the Post, penned an op-ed in 2017 calling on his outlet to “bring the ombudsman back,” as a way to combat then-President Donald Trump’s incessant attacks on the media as “fake news.”

An ombudsperson is “needed as never before,” Ignatius wrote in 2017. “Critics see media bigshots as arrogant, unaccountable elitists pursuing their own agendas. A good ombudsman changes that balance, in favor of readers and viewers — and fairness.”

Besides the many structural changes happening at the Post, there remain significant editorial decisions that have raised questions. This spring, for example, the Post acknowledged that its reporters had the story about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flying an upside-down American flag—a symbol of support for Trump’s stolen election lie—for three years before the New York Times published those details.

The Post finally ran their story nine days after the Times, admitting the delay in its own coverage. Barr, the editor who oversees the Post’s coverage of Lewis, took responsibility for initially killing the story.

The Times’ reporting prompted bipartisan blowback and calls from Democratic lawmakers for Alito to recuse himself from the court’s cases that dealt with Trump and Jan. 6 (he didn’t). 

But the timing of the Times’ report became all the more significant when the paper dropped a bombshell piece about justices’ internal discussions last week. Days after the Times published its story about the flag outside Alito’s house, the Times reported, Chief Justice John Roberts removed Alito as the author of the court’s opinion on how (and whether) people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 can be held legally accountable.

“While that timing is suggestive, it is unclear whether the two are linked,” the Times reported.

If only there was an ombudsperson to shed some light.

In another move toward shedding allegiance to local news coverage, the Washington Post has killed its only column that highlighted local artists and galleries.

The Aug. 25 print edition of the “In the Galleries” column by Mark Jenkins, which ran for 13 years, was the last. (Jenkins formerly wrote for City Paper and worked as the paper’s art director.)

BmoreArt first broke the news on Aug. 20, a day after Jenkins emailed local galleries, artists, and curators. “My editors at the Washington Post have decided to end the galleries column,” Jenkins wrote, noting that Sunday’s post would be his last. “I’m very sorry to send you this news. I’ve enjoyed writing the column, and getting to know so many artists, curators, and gallery owners.”

Jenkins’ column ran weekly and usually profiled three or four exhibits at smaller art galleries in the area. “In the Galleries” was generally credited with attracting visitors and helping both artists and art spaces make sales.

Jenkins declined to comment on the Post’s decision to axe his column but sources say he was given just two weeks’ notice that it would be coming to an end. Local art fans are despondent.

“It’s sad the Post is ending this column. They are going to lose readers. They are so stupid,” says Margery Goldberg, an artist and the founder and curator of Zenith Gallery in Shepherd Park. “It’s frickin’ ridiculous.”

Kate Lowman, an artist with Washington Printmakers Gallery, says, “Frankly as a citizen I am disappointed in the Post for failing to serve their purpose as a newspaper of record.” Lowman believes that the loss of Jenkins’ column will harm both local artists and local galleries that relied on the Post coverage to reach a greater range of audiences.

Post Style editors Ben Williams, Hank Stuever, Steven Johnson, and Jonathan Fischer all declined to comment on Jenkins and “In the Galleries” when contacted by City Paper.

A Post spokesperson confirmed the death of “In the Galleries” and tells City Paper: “The Washington Post will continue to publish local art coverage, including galleries and museums, across all platforms, as it has done outstanding of the [Jenkins] column.”

The move to end the column comes amid increasing reader concern that the Post is shedding staff and space for local news coverage, eliminating most of its local columnists, ending local obituaries, charging more money to publish death notices, and hiring staffers who have no connection to the District.

In June, the Post announced that Naveen Kumar would replace longtime theater critic Peter Marks, who took a voluntary buyout from the paper in December. But Kumar, who’s written theater reviews for the New York Times and Variety, has never lived in the District and, according to the June 20 hiring announcement, he will stay in New York. (Though Marks started his career at the Post while living in the area for a decade, he finished it in New York.)

Local playwrights, artistic directors, and theater owners are concerned. Kumar didn’t officially start at the paper until Aug. 19, but he has been writing theater reviews for the past few months in Marks’ absence. All of his coverage for the Post has focused on Broadway productions, including An Enemy of the People, The Notebook, Days of Wine and Roses, Hell’s Kitchen, and The Heart of Rock and Roll. He’s written nothing on D.C. theater.

Kumar could not be reached for comment. But on Friday night, Aug. 23, during a conversation with Marks at the Kennedy Center’s Local Theatre Festival, Kumar said of reviewing D.C.-area productions: “It’s thrilling for me to get to come to a new vibrant theater center and figure it all out. It’s an exciting thing to be learning, and I’m really looking forward to it.”

He also noted that he doesn’t see himself writing nice reviews of work he doesn’t care for just because it’s locally produced: “I won’t just celebrate it just because it’s on stage,” he said.

Amy Austin, the president and CEO of Theatre Washington (and former City Paper publisher), says that while she admires Kumar’s skill as a reviewer, she worries about his bandwidth to cover D.C. and, more generally, about the overall cutbacks happening within the news industry.

“Do I wish Naveen lived in D.C.? Yes,” Austin says. “Mid to smaller theaters are going to have a harder time” getting their shows reviewed in the Post, she says.

In recent months, City Paper has documented the Post’s decision to scale back local coverage with a disproportionate number of buyouts taking place in the paper’s Metro section. During the end of 2023 buyouts, the Post decided to restructure its local Metro columns. Courtland Milloy, John Kelly, and Theresa Vargas ended their columns (though Vargas is now the local enterprise editor). Only Petula Dvorak has continued with her local column.

More dismaying for many longtime Post readers are the changes to its editorial page, which went from three daily editorials to just one.

As embattled Post publisher Will Lewis works to build the outlet into a national brand, he has signaled that he intends to focus on core coverage areas “including investigations, business, technology, sports and features.” Missing from that list? The Metro section.

The news startup created from the ashes of shuttered DCist will start publishing  investigative news stories and offering helpful resources to readers by Halloween. The venture is seeded with more than $250,000 in crowdfunded donations, including a sizable, last-minute contribution from a wealthy couple that pushed the fundraiser over the edge. But long-term sustainability remains an open question.

At 51stnews.com, some of the laid-off DCist journalists will take direct aim at misdeeds within Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration and provide readers with thoughtful coverage of crime, according to Eric Falquero and Colleen Grablick, two of the six co-founders.

“I’d say the big things that I heard trend-wise is there needs to be a lot more accountability for the mayor’s administration,” says Falquero, who, like other members of the 51st, has been holding listening sessions with potential readers across almost every ward in the District; a meeting with Ward 7 residents is happening this week, he says, and a meeting in Ward 3 is in the works.

And while Falquero and Grablick credit the Washington Post with “doing a good job” covering crime in D.C., they feel that TV news coverage of it distorts reality.

“People told us they wanted smarter and more nuanced coverage of crime … smart stories that cut through the noise,” Grablick says. “They just want more crime coverage that does not paint the city in this very inaccurate and frankly harmful way.”

The co-founders also want the 51st to serve as a hub of information for readers: explainers on how to testify before the D.C. Council, how to apply for government assistance, and how to get a WMATA transit subsidy, for example.

“A lot of folks were also hungry for stories that celebrate D.C., especially east of the river,” says Grablick, who is attending graduate school in New York but will still write for the startup.

The 51st began a fundraising campaign in July with an initial goal of reaching $250,000. The founders say the goal is the minimum amount they need to launch the site and weekly newsletter and pay six writers and managers to staff it. The campaign stands at more than $273,600 as of publication. A last-minute gift of $50,000 from Viyas Sundaram and Jaya Saxena pushed the campaign over the $250,000 goal.

Sundaram is the CEO of the construction software firm GoCanvas, which was recently acquired by a German company for $770 million, according to the Washington Business Journal. Saxena is the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for Spencer Stuart consulting firm. Efforts to reach the couple were unsuccessful.

More than 3,000 people contributed during the monthlong campaign (the average donation was $64), though the founders say they don’t know how evenly donors were spread throughout the District.

In an interview on the City Cast DC podcast in July, Abigail Higgins, another co-founder, said they hoped that the initial $250,000 in crowdfunding would be matched by philanthropic donations. “So $500,000 is our initial fundraising goal,” Higgins said. “Which we believe will sustain us for about a year of operation.”

Grablick and Falquero say now that they have enough to launch the site and hope to continue fundraising to meet the initial goal.

Back in February, American University abruptly fired most of the DCist staff (Falquero and Teresa Frontado, another co-founder) and killed the local news website.

After a public outcry, the school agreed to keep an archive of the site online for 12 months, and DC Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes–Gavilan has said he hopes to buy the archived site and maintain it as a historical record. He recently confirmed that talks are ongoing, but there is no deal in place.

“The WAMU team continues to work on potential long-term solutions for the DCist archive,” Matt Bennett, a spokesperson for American University, tells City Paper. “They will communicate when updates are available.”

The other founding members of 51st—Maddie Poore and Natalie Delgadillo—are all former DCist staffers. All six have been holding down side gigs to support themselves as they work to launch the new site.

“To start, it’s going to be all part-time, but we’re going from part-time volunteer to part-time paid,” Falquero says. “And we will be working with freelance writers, too.”

The donations will allow each of them to get paid a small hourly wage (though neither Falquero nor Grablick were willing to provide a specific rate). They also are planning to hire a seventh staffer to oversee the technical logistics of managing the website and weekly newsletter, and will eventually create the opportunity for subscribers to pay for their reporting.

At the outset, all donors will be automatically subscribed to receive a weekly newsletter, which will serve as the “primary product,” Grablick says, comparing it to Substack.

A similar version of the newsletter will be posted on the website, but the reporting will be free for everyone. The first newsletter will hit inboxes in mid-October at the same time the website will go live.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that all six 51st co-founders were laid off from DCist. Only Falquero and Frontado were laid off.

Tom Sietsema’s most vivid memories growing up in the 1950s in Minnesota have to do with food. Specifically, his mother Dorothy’s cooking: homemade baked chicken with Tater Tots, bright red Jell-O parfait, and boiled carrots and pork chops. Dinner was served at 5:30 on the dot. Much of the time, they ate in front of the TV.

“My mom worked hard on every meal and meals were important to us,” Sietsema recently told City Paper over a three-course Italian meal at Claudio’s Table in Palisades. “We were so lucky.”

Sietsema has been eating food and writing about it for most of his adult life. And his reviews have been published for the past quarter century in the Washington Post. His longevity is perhaps due in part to his deft balancing of his Midwest-nice sensibility with harsh but fair criticism.

His 25-year tenure has eclipsed even his mentor and predecessor Phyllis Richman, who wrote food reviews for 23 years. But now, the man who is perhaps the Post’s most recognized local byline, is in uncharted territory.

The universe of unbiased food writers is steadily dwindling, and Sietsema stands atop the mountain alongside Craig LaBan, who advises diners for the Philadelphia Inquirer and is the only food critic in America at a big city daily who has been on the job longer than Sietsema.

Pete Wells, who had worked as the restaurant critic for the New York Times for the past 12 years, announced this week that he will be leaving the role soon, in part, for health reasons

“There are very few of us doing this job, and there will be even fewer still in the future,” LaBan says. “Tom really cares about this format and it shows.”

It certainly does. The question is whether enough readers will care in 20 years—hell, in five. 

The rise of food influencers in the past decade presents an existential threat to Sietsema’s craft. His reviews are now up against millennials and Gen Zers who typically get comped meals, or if they have enough followers, are actually paid by the restaurant to post mouthwatering photos and glowing reviews.

The trade-off, then, is Sietsema’s careful, practiced, and honest approach in exchange for some pretty pictures on TikTok from some bro named Bruce.

Mia Svirsky, the spark behind @districteats is a popular local Instagrammer. She went to George Washington University and dabbled in marketing and public relations before turning her account into a successful and imitated social media powerhouse.

The 27-year-old Brookline, Massachusetts, native lives in Dupont Circle and gets much of her feedback from young people in the region who come to her as an authority on food experiences. She currently has 77,000 followers on Instagram; Sietsema has 14,000.

“Young restaurant goers are not looking at Tom’s reviews,” Svirsky says. “I bet you a majority of people 30 and under have no idea who Tom even is. I wish I read him more. … I open up TikTok every morning, but I don’t really read the Post.”

Svirsky says that she often gets DMs from marketers or new restaurants that will buy her a meal if she pays them a visit. It’s a trade-off: She gets a free meal, and the restaurant expects her to share a positive experience with her followers.

Sietsema is the opposite. He remains stubbornly anonymous, he never accepts a single bite or drink for free, and only he decides which restaurants to review. He’s also equally focused not just on big name chefs but modest places to eat in the suburbs where families might go to celebrate a birthday.

While Sietsema takes some photos of his plate, his focus is on the newspaper, not social media. (Most of his food photos in his reviews are taken by photographers who visit the restaurant separately.)

“Nothing against those people but that’s not my approach,” says Sietsema. “I am open to change and doing things in a different way. Meeting readers wherever they are. It will always be about food.” 

“I think these platforms are going to have to bend to the audience,” Svirsky says.

The Post does not like to give out data on specific clicks or the popularity of an individual writer, and has declined to do so for Sietsema’s reviews. So it’s hard to gauge his readership and impact and how it might compare to an influencer. But his regular online chats with readers are often the most clicked items on those days, according to the Post’s website.

For his part, because of his anonymity, Sietsema avoids chasing anything that resembles fame. (He initially resisted talking with City Paper for this story.)

Sietsema says his ambition is “to be a trusted friend who happens to eat out a hell of a lot more than you do and is happy to share his opinion.”

Sietsema also reads a lot. He schedules his work weeks or months in advance, and he writes all of his activities down in a spiral bound notebook (his collection goes back decades), carefully taking note of what he plans to do and what he actually did.

He approaches each review with a strong sense of what’s right and wrong in dining: Is it too noisy? Was the waitstaff intrusive? Can you get a table? How much will it cost you? And he is constantly reassessing. He will dine out 10 or more times a week, and typically makes multiple visits to a single restaurant before writing a review. He often will take one or two bites of food and push the plate out of the way so as not to fill up.

“I used to salt deserts to avoid eating too much, but now I just move it away and take down my notes,” he says. 

Sietsema is careful to avoid cameras and always books reservations using an alias. But after 25 years in this town, his identity isn’t exactly a secret.

“Some of the people in the restaurant business know him. They have photos of him in the kitchen,” says former Post Style writer Jura Koncius, who has frequently joined Sietsema for meals while he works.

Koncius, his closest friend at the Post until she took a buyout last winter, wrote about design and interiors for 47 years and says Sietsema’s stylish dress reminds her of formal Eastern European men from a generation ago. “He’s just a consummate gentleman. Maybe it’s his Midwestern roots but he is unfailingly polite,” Koncius says.

A middle child who grew up in Worthington, Minnesota, Sietsema was in thrall of his mother’s ability to host and entertain in a modest home on Lake Okabena.

His father, a Marine who fought in World War II, was awarded a Purple Heart but was much less emotive. “He was of that time,” Sietsema says, adding that his father still had a creative side. Elwin Sietsema worked as a studio photographer in their town when he returned from Japan. He died in 2007; Sietsema remains close to his mother, Dorothy, who still lives in Minnesota and has cooked meals with her son for Post stories. Sietsema also has an older sister and younger brother.

Sietsema went to Georgetown University and graduated in 1983 from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He landed an entry-level job as a copy aide at the Post where he sorted mail and answered the phone.

From there, he worked at a variety of media outlets—first at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He even worked briefly at Microsoft (writing for Sidewalk.com) before returning to the Post in 2000.

Since then, Sietsema has ventured far and wide. “I wanted to be a food critic, not just a restaurant critic,” he says. So in the heady days after Jeff Bezos bought the paper, and journalists were encouraged to “think big,” Sietsema had the notion, around 2015, of traveling the entire country to taste and write about food.

“My editor encouraged me to spend a year traveling the country and writing about food. I did this deep dive across the country,” Sietsema says. “At the time Portland, Oregon, was number one. So much variety and fresh ingredients. They have hundreds of different types of mushrooms.”

Over the years, Sietsema has eaten all over the world, from Cambodia to Peru, memorably wrote about the eating habits of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and documented life as a dishwasher.

Sietsema’s introduction to Bezos was memorable, as he was invited to a private party for senior Post editors and writers at Barmini (Bezos rented it out for the night). José Andrés himself brought out each course, and Sietsema found himself sitting next to Bezos, who, despite his high-end tastes, was happy to chat about Arby’s, milkshakes, and pizza parties for his children.

Shortly after, Sietsema was approached by Bezos with a request for the right places to dine in Paris. Sietsema obliged and sent a few recommendations via email.

Bezos and other Post executives and editors are not the only ones who check what Sietsema has to say about restaurants. Andrés also loves reading Sietsema’s reviews.

“When Tom started, Jaleo was still one of the few restaurants in Penn Quarter, when I was a much younger man. So much was different in D.C.,” Andrés says. “In many ways, his journey is like that of D.C. dining, changing and evolving year to year. What I love most about Tom is not just how he celebrates the restaurants of today but how deliberate he is in recognizing those of the past as well.”

Sietsema acknowledges that readers are changing, and he won’t do this forever. At some point, he says, might write a book about childrens’ recipes.

“One thing that’s hard is you can’t ever attach an asterisk to the column that says, ‘Sorry, I’ve had a bad week,’” Sietsema says.

One tidbit for the road:

Worker-led, But Will It Work?

A group of six journalists who were laid off when WAMU killed DCist has banded together to form a nonprofit news website that will cover the District with original reporting and tidbits about events and community resources.

“We believe journalism is a public good and everyone should have access to it,” says Abigail Higgins, one of six co-founders of the site. The other co-founders are: Colleen Grablick, Eric Falquero, Maddie Poore, Natalie Delgadillo, and Teresa Frontado.

The 51st aims to begin publishing after Labor Day if they can raise $250,000 by Aug. 16; an online fundraiser had surpassed $160,000 in donations by publication. The co-founders say they’re looking to raise another $250,000 via philanthropic contributions to sustain the venture for the first year.

The 51st will exist in three places: a website, a weekly newsletter, and periodic public meetings, where reporters will hunt for news tips and look to establish credibility with communities; the first two events take place this weekend in Congress Heights and Dupont Circle.

It’s hard to think of anything that has gone right for Will Lewis as he hit his six-month anniversary atop the Washington Post this week.

His top editor (Sally Buzbee) left soon after his arrival, and his pick to replace her (Robert Winnett) backed out of the job before he even started amid reporting on his questionable ethics.

Lewis’ newsroom has dedicated an entire team of reporters to look into his own morally dubious behavior as an editor and media executive in the U.K. as other major U.S. news outlets compete for the same scoops.

The results so far have produced a steady stream of embarrassing stories, all of which raise serious questions about Lewis’ ethics.

Lewis has refused to answer specific questions about his efforts to kill or obscure stories that are critical of him, and his haughtiness has cost him valuable credibility in an industry and a newsroom where accountability and transparency are essential.

Just last week, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused Lewis of a “cover-up” in a London phone-hacking scandal while Lewis was an executive at Rubert Murdoch’s media company. Brown called for London’s Metropolitan Police to open an investigation into “the destruction of millions of emails vital to the criminal investigation into phone hacking.”

As readers, reporters, and others wonder just how much longer Lewis can continue taking hits that would have cost most any other journalist their job, he now must recruit an editor who can unite the newsroom in spite of him and who aligns with his vision for the paper’s future.

That’s a tall order. Maybe he could use some suggestions:

> Kelly McBride is NPR’s public editor and the senior vice president and chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute. If ever there was a need for an ethicist at the Post, it’s now.

> Wesley Lowery is a star former reporter at the Post who made a name for himself reporting on one of the most important civil rights stories of this generation: police brutality and the high-profile deaths of Black men at the hands of law enforcement. His list of accolades includes a Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award, among many others. He has reportedly clashed with his bosses at the Post but is not shy about sharing his criticisms of mainstream media and could offer a fresh perspective. Plus, he’s local. Lowery now leads American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop.

> Nikole Hannah-Jones is the brain behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project and a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. She founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, dedicated to training journalists of color and keeping them in the industry. She lives in New York, but she also teaches journalism at Howard University. Although she tells City Paper she has no interest in the top job at the Post, one can dream.

> Krissah Thompson is a managing editor at the Post and might be a leading candidate to lead Lewis’ “third newsroom” focused on social media and service journalism. But why not consider her for the top job? The Texas-born journalist came to the Post in 2001. An internal hire could mend some of the damage Lewis inflicted on newsroom sensibilities by initially hiring four White men to run the paper. Thompson could not be reached for comment.

> Mike Semel has been at the Post since 2000 and spent all of his time on local coverage. He’s forgotten more about the area than most of the Metro staff will ever know, and his elevation could signal a commitment to strengthening coverage of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Semel declined to talk about the possibility.

> Kevin Merida, a former Los Angeles Times editor who spent two decades at the Post, is another name that continues to pop up in discussions about the paper’s next leader. Merida was also a senior VP at ESPN and editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, a website that covered race, sports, and culture. But I’m told that bruised egos, his love of California weather, and time have combined to make his return to the District a remote possibility. Still, he remains enormously popular with Post reporters.

> Sewell Chan is a former Post reporter who currently runs the newsroom of the highly regarded Texas Tribune. In September, he is set to become executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. He would bring decades of experience as a newsroom leader, and “possesses a deep well of experience, incredible insights into the challenges confronting media at this moment, and an abiding passion for journalism,” says Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School. 

> Tracy Grant is a well-regarded editor who might have been a good candidate to replace Marty Baron. She left the Post a few years ago and started a new career as editor-in-chief of Britannica. Grant and Baron declined to talk with City Paper.

> Steven Ginsberg left the Post to work at the Athletic, though many Post staffers say they miss him. He held a number of jobs at the Post, including national editor, senior politics editor, and local politics editor; he’s also edited several projects awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He could easily step into the role, but it’s unclear if he wants the hassle of leaving his new job atop the sports world. He could not be reached for comment.

> Andrea Valdez is a managing editor of The Atlantic and co-founder of The 9th News. She previously edited the Texas Observer, WIRED, and Texas Monthly.

> Bill Keller was the founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Project, a nonprofit that publishes hard-hitting journalism on criminal justice in the U.S. Before that, he wrote for the New York Times and served as the paper’s executive editor from 2003 until 2011.

> Pamela Colloff is a reporter for ProPublica and a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine who publishes deep, impactful work. Her articles have also appeared in The New Yorker and Texas Monthly. She could not be reached for comment.

The mess surrounding Lewis is likely to keep plenty of credible candidates away.

David Maraniss, an author and longtime Post writer and editor, criticized Lewis recently on Facebook, writing: “I don’t know a single person at the Post who thinks the current situation with the publisher and supposed new editor can stand.” Maraniss declined to elaborate but affirms that he stands by his statement.

As Lewis continues to search for a new executive editor and figure out how to successfully restructure the newsroom, he has to contend with regular stories questioning his alleged role in covering up a phone-hacking scandal while working for Murdoch.

This past Saturday, June 27, the Post offered another front-page installment in the coverage. The story, carrying seven bylines, is a detailed look at the role Lewis played in ordering the destruction of email evidence during the hacking scandal.

Lewis recently told the Post that he “did nothing wrong,” adding “these allegations are untrue.” But he declines to answer specific questions. Lewis has not responded to a request for comment.

Post editors have tapped former editor Cameron Barr to oversee the paper’s coverage of Lewis. Barr did not respond to questions, but Post staffers say that he’s managing that coverage from the United Kingdom. His team includes Elahe Izadi, Sarah Ellison, Jon Swaine, Craig Whitlock, Jonathan O’Connell, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Greg Miller, Aaron Davis, and Jeremy Barr. 

The New York Times has also dispatched reporters to London to dig into Lewis and his role in the phone-hacking scandal. And two former Post greats, Jo Becker and Julie Tate, are among the muckrakers assigned to the job. The latter’s investigative skills were reportedly the envy of even the CIA. 

As the search for a newsroom leader continues, Lewis recently announced that his big plan to redesign the paper’s structure to better reflect the areas he wants it to focus on has been postponed. The so-called “Build It” stage was supposed to kick off the first week of July and be operational by fall, Lewis said.

“We will continue our Build It efforts on the third newsroom with the timeline for full implementation in Q1 2025,” Lewis wrote to his staff recently.

Despite Lewis’ rocky start and shaky future, one bright spot for him is his purchase of a $7.2 million Georgetown estate.

Property records indicate that the District government agreed to merge three lots together to form the property, which features two large lawns perfect for cocktail parties, badminton courts, or croquet, not to mention a screening room and two garages with space for three cars. Lewis’ wife and their four children are reportedly  arriving in D.C. this summer.

The British International School of Washington is about a 10-minute walk from Lewis’ new home. Unless his luck begins to change, Lewis may have a lot more time to walk his kids to school.

On one of his first trips as publisher of the Washington Post, Will Lewis rubbed elbows in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting with the likes of Elon Musk, John Kerry, and his then-executive editor Sally Buzbee.

The January excursion was an auspicious start for the leaders of one of the country’s legacy newspapers: Lewis, a charming Brit, and Buzbee, a Kansas native who spent 30 years at the Associated Press before becoming the first woman to lead the Post’s editorial operation.

But the honeymoon phase was short. By June, the relationship between the British media executive and the competent old-school newsroom leader crumbled. Lewis shoved Buzbee out the door after reportedly trying twice to convince her not to publish stories about his own alleged role in a London phone-hacking scandal.

“I would have preferred to stay to help us get through this period, but it just got to the point where it wasn’t possible,” Buzbee told her team of editors after Lewis announced her resignation on Sunday, June 2, according to the New York Times.

In the days that followed Buzbee’s ouster, circumstances have only gotten worse for Lewis. The Post’s publisher and CEO has found himself on the losing end of news stories throughout the past week that pull back the curtain on some of his unethical behavior. The revelations—a quid pro quo offer to an NPR journalist, on top of his attempts to quash critical coverage of himself in his own newspaper—have media observers and reporters speculating about whether Lewis is long for this job.

Politico media columnist (and former WCP editor) Jack Shafer writes that the recent reporting about Lewis’ bumbling attempts to spike critical coverage of himself has sufficiently marred his credibility and are, at the very least, enough to force Jeff Bezos to reconsider his employment.

“He can’t very well put out the business fire that is consuming the Washington Post … if his own pants are aflame,” Shafer writes. “Will Post owner Jeff Bezos want to keep a publisher who is beset with a fast-growing credibility crisis?”

Former Post media reporter Paul Farhi similarly writes for the Daily Beast that Lewis has used up strikes one, two, and three. “Nobody wants to work for an untrustworthy publisher,” Farhi writes.

As he works to solidify his hold on the Post, Lewis is also carefully tending his image. Lewis has hired Londoner Elsa Makouezi as his office’s head of communications—undermining the outlet’s two other public relations staffers.

“Time for some humility from me,” Lewis wrote in a note to the newsroom last week. “I need to improve how well I listen and how well I communicate so that we all agree more clearly where urgent improvements are needed and why.”

***

In December, Makouezi led negotiations with NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, promising exclusive access to Lewis in exchange for not publishing anything on the British tabloid hacking story. NPR ran the story anyway; and Folkenflik reported the quid pro quo offer last week. Makouezi hasn’t responded to requests for comment, nor has the Post’s other media relations team, other than sending email with links to news stories.

The phone-hacking allegations clearly touch a nerve with Lewis. After news broke of the quid pro quo, he dug his hole even deeper by disparaging Folkenflik as an “activist” who “dusted down” old allegations.

Meanwhile, Lewis is also trying to execute on his promised “Build It, Fix It” initiative to turn around a newsroom that has seen readership drop by 50 percent since 2020, and, according to Lewis, lost $77 million in revenue last year. Barely six months into the job, Lewis has already lost some allies within the Post, even as he continues to hire more Brits to help him turn the paper around.

Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, believes Lewis should apologize to Folkenflik for the activist criticism and for dismissing his book about media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

“The question is has Lewis lost the newsroom? When you lose the newsroom in a news organization, that’s a serious matter,” Rosen says. “It very often leads to the ending of your editorship. [Lewis] has to prove that he understands the Post newsroom, that he understands the culture of the newsroom and what is important to the people who work there.”

City Paper has been talking with Post reporters since January about Lewis and his plan to turn the paper around. While there’s a fair amount of frustration over the way some of the big structural changes to the newsroom have been announced, most of the staff to speak with City Paper are trying to remain optimistic about the future.

“This was a tumultuous rollout and obviously not ideal, but at the base we are rooting for his plan to succeed and eager to be enlisted to help execute it,” says Carol Leonnig, a national investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner. “Everyone I talk to is all-hands-on-deck, but obviously we are all journalists who are going to kick the tires and ask hard questions along the way.”

The Post’s union has not responded to a request for comment, but the Guild reportedly has written to Lewis asking for more information about Buzbee’s dismissal, about the stories detailing his efforts to censor bad publicity (and his denials of those details), and his role in the British hacking scandal.

(In the U.K., it is much more common for journalists to pay sources for stories, whereas most reputable news organizations in the United States consider the practice highly unethical.)

Between 2005 and 2007, a Murdoch-owned newspaper in London hacked phone records to publish sensitive, private information on politicians, celebrities, and others. When the scandal came to light, a national inquiry examined not just the actions of Murdoch’s newspaper but British journalism ethics more broadly.

Lewis had a top-level job working for the Murdoch corporate media empire at the time. In London court filings, he is accused of leading a cover-up of illegal phone hacking. Prince Harry and Hugh Grant were among the victims. Lewis was not a named defendant in the court case, and he has denied wrongdoing.

But he has also refused to talk about his role in the scandal—either to reporters or to his own staff. (A newspaper publisher typically does not exert influence over what the paper publishes or pressure their journalists to shape coverage in any way.)

Yet Lewis clashed with Buzbee last week and reportedly also argued with her back in March over the same issue. He didn’t want the Post printing anything about his role in the hacking scandal. When Buzbee did not bend to his demand, he accused her of showing “a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation,” the New York Times reports.

In the hours after the Post published a story updating readers on the hacking scandal, the paper’s director of newsletter strategy Elana Zak instructed deputy editors not to promote the story via newsletter, according to an email obtained by Semafor.

“Please do not put this Prince Harry story in any of your newsletters,” Zak wrote in the email. She did not return emails or calls seeking comment.

Buzbee has not publicly commented on her dismissal or the reported clashes with Lewis. According to Axios, former interim Post CEO and Bezos confidante Patty Stonesifer is throwing a party for Buzbee later this month. The guest list is expected to be heavy on women executives—a potential nod to the fact that Buzbee was replaced by two of Lewis’ White male former colleagues. Citing unnamed sources, Axios reports that the outlet’s two top women editors, Matea Gold and Krissah Thompson, were not considered to be Buzbee’s replacement.

Despite, or perhaps because of, Lewis’ efforts to patch over the phone-hacking scandal, the story recently has gotten more coverage from a wide variety of outlets. So has the fact that Lewis has now brought in Matt Murray, another former Murdoch editor, to lead the newsroom.

***

In recent months, Lewis has installed other Brits in top positions at the Post. Lewis quietly hired New York-based media businessperson and fellow countryman Karl Wells in January to serve as chief growth officer. Wells worked for the Sun, a British tabloid, and the Times before going to work for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, where he worked directly with Lewis. According to the announcement about his hiring, Wells will remain in New York—an allowance that would have been unthinkable in the old days under editor Ben Bradlee when the fabric of the DMV was an intrinsic part of the newspaper.

Lewis also hired Suzi Watford to serve as chief strategy officer. Watford spent more than 20 years working for Murdoch before she was hired by the Post this spring. She attended the University of Surrey and also worked at the Telegraph and the Times (of London) and was recruited by Lewis to work with him under Murdoch.

Lewis announced that Murray, former WSJ editor in chief, would take over for Buzbee and remain in the job through the election in November. Then Murray will transition to a brand-new role at the paper focused on video storytelling and service journalism—including flexible payment methods and a heavy reliance on embracing artificial intelligence to help share news, according to the Post.

Robert Winnett, who also worked alongside Lewis at the British Daily Telegraph, will then take over for Murray as the Post’s top editor. He is largely unknown in U.S. news circles; in Britain his coworkers gave him the nickname “rat boy,” a reference to his tendency to use some less-than-scrupulous reporting methods. In one example, recently reported by the Daily Beast, Winnett sent a junior reporter undercover into the U.K.’s Cabinet Office to leak government documents. (The reporter, Claire Newell, was arrested but never prosecuted.)

In his new role, Winnett will be in charge of the core newsroom but also of building a suite of news offerings for subscribers: Pro Post and Pro Plus. To help lead that effort, the Post announced in May the hiring of Martin Kady, who worked at Politico for 16 years and led its subscription news offering before working for a time at news start-up the Messenger, which folded after less than a year.

Along with Murray and Winnett, Editorial Page Editor David Shipley leads the other major arm of the Post newsroom. Shipley, who worked at Bloomberg for many years, now oversees the Post’s opinion section. That means that all three of the Post’s top editors are middle-aged White men—a fact not lost on staffers who have pressed Lewis on the lack of diversity in the upper ranks.

“The cynical interpretation is that it sort of feels like you chose two of your buddies,” political correspondent Ashley Parker told Lewis during an all-staff meeting, according to multiple accounts. “And now we have four white men running three newsrooms.” She declined to comment further to City Paper.

Until Buzbee’s exit, Lewis appeared to be getting the benefit of the doubt from many in the Post newsroom. One national reporter tells City Paper he appreciated how personable and engaging Lewis was—it reminded this reporter of Bradlee or former publisher Don Graham, who was known for sending little notes of appreciation to the news staff when he read something that struck a chord with him.

“Will was seen as the personable one who would send cheerful notes to reporters about their stories—in a homage to the ‘Donnie Grams’ of yesteryear—while Sally was the aloof one,” this reporter says. But now, Lewis has “managed to completely flip that script around,” they say.

Correction: This article incorrectly reported that Matt Murray is British. This version has been corrected.

Last week, the Washington Post notched another three Pulitzer Prizes. Good for the hometown paper. Not so good for the rest of journalism.

That the Post, which announced the awards on its own front page alongside a somewhat self-indulgent photo of staffers in their own newsroom, was honored with journalism’s most prestigious award is not news. It would have been more newsworthy if the outlet—one of the biggest and most well-resourced newspapers in the country—had been snubbed this year.

But what is newsworthy about this year’s Pulitzer Prizes is what the list of awardees says about the state of journalism—especially when it comes to local and regional reporting. This year continues the trend of the past few Pulitzer seasons, which have been consistently dominated by the biggest outlets.

The Post, the New York Times, ProPublica (congrats to former WCP contributor Joshua Kaplan!), LA Times, the New Yorker, Reuters, and Associated Press absolutely dominated the awards this year, winning 12 of the 15 journalism categories. Many of these outlets have hundreds, even thousands, of reporters on hand and teams dedicated to long-form journalism that tends to impress the Pulitzer committee.

Only Lookout Santa Cruz, a digital publication that didn’t even exist five years ago, beat out the biggest outlets in the country with the award for its breaking coverage of flooding and mudslides. And the Invisible Institute, which has about 20 people on staff, managed to win two Pulitzers for local reporting (in collaboration with City Bureau) and audio reporting (in collaboration with USG Audio).

Years ago, the Pulitzer Prizes were an opportunity to spotlight the very best reporting and writing from around the country. Awards routinely went to outlets in small and medium-size towns.

The Las Vegas Sun, the Toledo Blade, the White Plains Journal News, the Miami Herald, and the Dallas Morning News all racked up awards—a snapshot of great journalism from around the country. The big papers always had a leg up, but small and midsize newspapers could (and did) compete if they had a good story and covered it with determination, energy, and flair.

The tiny Rocky Mountain News, for example, won two Pulitzers, in 2000 and 2003, for its photographs of the shooting at Columbine High School and of Colorado wildfires, respectively.

Alt-weeklies have been recognized as well, with Portland, Oregon’s Nigel Jaquiss winning the 2005 award for investigative journalism for Willamette Week’s exposure of a former governor’s sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl. The Stranger’s Eli Sanders won the 2012 award for feature writing for his report on a woman’s courtroom testimony about the horrific rape and murder of her partner in their home.

The last really great year for outlets not named the Post or Times came in 2014. Winners included the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Tampa Bay Times, the Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), the Boston Globe, the Center for Public Integrity, and the Charlotte Observer.

But those days seem distant after this year’s concentration of winners among the big media outlets—a trend that is unlikely to change anytime soon. 

In a recent episode of the podcast Search Engine, host PJ Vogt spoke with Times columnist Ezra Klein about the “media apocalypse.” The conversation was sparked in part by Klein’s column following the announcement that staffers at the beloved music site Pitchfork were being laid off as the outlet was being folded into GQ.

“What’s failing here isn’t a particular editorial strategy,” Klein writes. “It’s that the middle is collapsing in journalism.” He points out that once-robust and successful outlets—the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed News, Vice, Sports Illustrated, HuffPost, Jezebel, old and new Gawker—have either shut down completely or significantly pared back their operations to the point where they are no longer recognizable.

Klein explains on the podcast that the Sun, the LA Times, and the Dallas Morning News didn’t previously compete directly with the New York Times for readers.

“The key thing happening right now is all of the general interest players are in competition with each other,” Klein says on the pod. “And that’s going to have a natural effect of if you’re only going to subscribe to one large news bundle, you’re going to subscribe to the largest news bundle.”

“The small things are surviving … and the huge battleships like the New York Times are surviving and everything in the middle is getting crushed,” Vogt adds.

That’s a disaster, as Klein points out in his column: “The middle can be more specific and strange and experimental than mass publications, and it can be more ambitious and reported and considered than the smaller players. The middle is where a lot of great journalists are found and trained. The middle is where local reporting happens and where culture is made rather than discovered.”

I asked the notoriously opaque Pulitzer Prize Board about entries from smaller media outlets across categories, but it declined to provide any data that would reflect the range of entries among those outlets compared with large regional outlets or national ones.

Sean Murphy, with the Pulitzer Administrator’s office, says there were 1,200 journalism entries, but would not say how many are in each category or share specifics on the organizations that submitted their work. He does note that within the “local reporting” and “commentary” categories, about 25 to 30 percent of the submissions are from regional and smaller media outlets.

But without knowing how the Pulitzer Prize Board defines a regional paper, this statistic is useless. And the Pulitzer media contacts refuse to provide any hard data on either submissions or news outlet size.

Further complicating the ambitions of smaller news orgs is that their most talented journalists eventually graduate to larger publications with more resources and better pay. This phenomenon is also not necessarily new. The cream of the crop rises to the top, as they say. But it becomes harder for small outlets with fewer resources to create news coverage of distinction when their most skilled writers leave just as they start to develop their own voice.

For example, the Post’s winning entry in the category for national reporting tells the story of the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and how it has been frequently used in mass shootings around the country. It’s an incredible piece of journalism told in an unconventional way.

The series was anchored by Silvia Foster-Frau, who did impressive work for the San Antonio Express-News before joining the Post just a few years ago.

These days, the industry looks a bit like the NBA, where the most talented and coveted journalists move between teams that can offer the most pay and prestige. Meanwhile, small and medium-size outlets throughout the country continue to close up shop. D.C. needs no reminder of this carnage.

The Post’s win for its 15 stories on gun violence came alongside awards for editorials—a notable accomplishment for the Editorial Page editor David Shipley. Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been confined in a Russian prison for criticizing the war in Ukraine since 2022, won the prize for commentary.

David Hoffman also won for a series of editorials on how technology is being used by corrupt governments against their own citizens.

In the end, there is no single solution for changing the way awards are distributed. A tiered system, like weight classes for boxers, could help level the field. But would an award mean as much if you’re not competing against the best and biggest?

And there will remain critics who think the entire award process is overblown anyway. For most readers, the Pulitzer is not a determining factor in whether they read the Post versus the Times versus, say, a small digital outlet. Most folks outside of journalism care very little about journalism awards.

On the other hand, readers might cancel their subscriptions to the paper that changes the way it covers high school sports, writes fewer stories about local government, or seems absurdly out of step with local issues on their editorial page.

Media power has been consolidating at a smaller number of outlets, even as the total number of outlets where people share news is growing. Substacks, blogs, and even social media platforms news sharing sometimes provide the perception of lots of news voices in the woods, while the actual number of organizations is shrinking.

According to a November 2023 report from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, at the current rate, by the end of 2024, the U.S. will have just one third of the newspapers it did in 2005.

The Medill report says more than half of the counties in the U.S. “have no, or very limited, access to a reliable local source.” In fact, 204 counties have no local news outlet, and another 1,562 have only one remaining source of local news.

The best way to combat that is to invest in news gathering and—as we often do when buying eggs, vegetables, or Christmas trees—buy and invest locally.
“If you want local news to exist, you have to subscribe to local news, and read it and spend time there,” Klein says on the podcast. “You have to make it vibrant by your presence and by your decisions.”

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with the correct spelling Silvia Foster-Frau’s name.

Podcasts are not great sources of news. David Plotz knows this, yet here he is, the co-host of a long-running gabby political podcast, now bringing a series of locally focused, newsy pods to cities throughout the country.

On any given day, City Cast [INSERT CITY NAME] delivers 11 different locally focused episodes in 11 different cities. In 20-minute bites, co-hosts chew over the top stories of the day pulled from local headlines, chitchat about personal gripes, and give you suggestions for date nights. They interview reporters, artists, authors, public officials, and business owners. By the end, the pods aim to come across as relatable, conversational, informative, and just slightly smarter than you.

City Cast DC, for example, has explored historic alleys and what the hell is going on with the demise of the Connecticut Avenue bike lane. City Cast Pittsburgh did a segment on foraging for mushrooms. City Cast Boise gave listeners a little peek into the best potato dishes. And over at City Cast Denver, the podcast focused on where to find snack food if you’re smoking pot and get the munchies.

These customized city podcasts are trying hard to scratch an itch, to serve a specific niche, and to tap into an ever-elusive combination of curiosity and fun. But the question remains: Do people in D.C. (and elsewhere) want more podcasts?

Plotz thinks so.

“There’s an opportunity in local podcasting,” he says. “Podcasting has colonized all these bits of traditional audio … so why isn’t there a podcasting version of local news?”

Plotz, a former City Paper writer and editor and now the CEO of City Cast, sees his venture as a way to build community rather than a primary source of news. 

“It’s really good at creating this medium for emotion and feeling and community and connection,” he says. “Daily local podcasts are designed to make you feel more connected to the city. You should listen to the cast and feel more attached to the community.”

Ruth Werner might be a perfect audience member for City Cast DC.

A former longtime D.C. Council staffer (and current analyst for the D.C. Auditor) who follows politics just as closely as she follows culture, Werner sampled both the podcast and the newsletter when they started. “I like the variety of hyper local topics and length of each episode,” she says.

Out in Denver, Lauren Gifford says she has some of the same positive feelings about the podcast. 

“I think the podcast taps into pretty interesting people,” says Gifford, who was recently a guest on an episode in Denver. “It’s a little bit of a cool kid vibe. … They speak very conversationally; it’s not NPR important. … It’s just like a cool conversation.”

Listeners such as Werner and Gifford are an essential part of the blueprint if City Cast is going to grow the way its investors want to see.

There are about 180,000 listeners nationally to the podcast, each of which have a sister email newsletter, called Hey [INSERT CITY NAME] (a name coined by a former City Cast Houston host Lisa Gray, who also did a stint at City Paper many years ago). Those emails enjoy an enviable 60 percent open rate and about 350,000 newsletter subscribers nationally, according to Plotz. 

In D.C., he adds, there are about 42,000 newsletter subscribers with a 67 percent open rate on the emails (D.C. and Chicago have the largest email subscription rate, not surprisingly). There are about 22,000 people who listen to the City Cast DC podcast in a given month, though the daily listener count is much smaller.

Plotz says City Cast podcasts around the country are designed to deliver three messages. First is what he calls the “pleasure” center: a new restaurant or a weekend museum or concert. Second is news, which Plotz defines as informing listeners about what is important in their city—the biggest stories of the day—and what they need to know in order to be an informed citizen. Government policy, crime, and local schools are all part of this category. And third: ways you can be a better citizen. Plotz says that includes everything from how to properly dispose of an old mattress to composting and volunteering.

“That is the category that we struggle the most with,” he says. And rightly so; everyone’s definition of what it takes to be a good citizen is different.

As the podcast takes aim at that lofty goal of improving humanity, Plotz acknowledges that the venture isn’t turning a profit. “Though we are nearing local profitability in some of our cities,” he says.

One obvious weakness in the model is that the pods are unlikely to produce any original news reporting. In fact, the whole business model is based on not producing original journalism or public accountability, despite the presence of some talented current and former journalists on their mastheads.

The daily episodes feel like a cross between Fresh Air and The View, while the newsletter primarily aggregates news coverage and links from other media outlets—credited but always a day after the news came out. Their event listings aren’t bad though.

Although the City Cast DC pod has its own staff, they recently hired freshly laid-off local reporter Jacob Fenston as he pursues a plan to visit all 683 parks in D.C.

Only a fraction of these so-called parks actually fit the generally accepted definition (large, green, free). Most are chunks of land adjacent to roadways or patches of grass alongside federal properties. But they are officially designated as parks and overseen by the National Park Service. Many are chronically neglected or underused, which is part of what sparked Fenston’s interest.

Fenston, considered one of the ace environmental reporters in the city, was laid off when American University-owned NPR affiliate WAMU decided to shut down DCist back in February. But don’t expect any hard news reporting on those issues during Fenston’s appearances on City Cast DC, though he says his contract includes appearing on the podcast a few times but only to talk about his park visits and seeking out boundary stones.

As they sidestep hard news gathering, City Cast podcasts and newsletters also are not likely to discuss anything that’s outside their target zone. They are stubbornly urban and ignore everything that happens in the sprawling suburbs outside D.C., Pittsburgh, and other cities where the shows air.

This approach differs from most traditional news organizations, which chase their readers, viewers, and listeners out into the suburbs with stories about the suburbs—to the detriment of more consistent coverage of inner-city issues.

In D.C., for example, the City Cast audience should not hold its breath waiting for a podcast guest from Rockville or a newsletter about Fairfax County—though the CEO would like to see that evolve.

“I think right now we are a little too D.C.-focused,” Plotz says. “Our audience is extremely well-educated, more single, and skews female. We seek as broad an audience as possible. There are a ton of people out there listening to daily national news podcasts. We want to be their go-to local show.”

As they mine the local audience for listeners and readers, City Cast DC is aware that it’s competing with local public radio and local news, including, ahem, City Paper’s District Line Daily newsletter. Plotz sees the Axios model, which uses reporters but also relies in part on aggregation and a catchy morning email to build a loyal readership, as more of a direct competitor.

“Our chief competitor is the fragmentation of time and media consumption,” Plotz says. “We compete with Axios and public radio in most cities … but I don’t see our relationships with other local media outlets as primarily competitive. We want there to be a rich ecosystem of local media, with people engaged with their community and advertisers clamoring to reach local audiences.” City Cast is set up in 11 cities; Axios has reporters in 30.

Plotz is a D.C. lifer, having grown up here, worked here, and raised his family here. He lives in Ward 3 and is steeped in the media world, having spent decades as a writer at Slate after his stint at City Paper and before this turn in his career leading a new podcasting venture into a saturated marketplace.

“Everybody and their brother has their own podcast,” Plotz admits. “My brother has a podcast and my ex-wife has a podcast.”

As chief executive, Plotz is charged with overseeing a national operation with ambitions to continue adding cities. Beginning with inaugural broadcasts Denver and Chicago in Spring 2021, City Cast now employs about 70 people in 11 cities across the U.S.: Chicago, Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Madison (Wisconsin); Portland (Oregon), Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Boise, and D.C.

Plotz aims to add Austin and Nashville to the list, with the goal of broadcasting in 17 cities by 2025 and 45 cities by 2030—an ambitious growth rate.

Working in City Cast’s favor is its simple, easy-to-replicate template structure—not unlike a Wendy’s franchise—that requires a minimal investment to take hold.

“In every city, we have a team of four on the edit side and one on the business side … an executive producer, a host, staff producer, and a newsletter writer,” Plotz says. “Those four people do a daily newsletter and a daily podcast.”

The model relies on a strong local host to carry the daily conversation and drive interest in the newsletter.

In D.C., local author and journalist Michael Schaffer, yet another City Paper alum, plays host. He lends his encyclopedic knowledge of the city, strong existing relationships with media and local personalities, and a dose of dad jokes.

Schaffer, whose other day job is writing for Politico’s magazine, presides over daily conversations on topics that range from silly to serious. He guides the discussion with incisive questioning, but his real strength is providing historical context for conversations with the guests, who sometimes seem as if they’ve just moved to the city.

City Cast is owned by Graham Holdings, the company spun off from the sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos in 2013. Besides advertising, the program also sells memberships and special one-off, five-minute mini podcasts or an extra sponsored episode on Saturdays.

Graham Holdings, overseen by Don Graham, owns a wide range of investments with no obvious theme or industry. They count Kaplan Test Prep as a property, as well as a few industrial suppliers, seven TV stations in the south, a string of car dealerships, a home health care provider, the Clyde’s restaurant chain and Old Ebbitt Grill, Framebridge, and Slate.

Graham did not respond to requests for an interview, but it’s worth noting that his commitment to local news stories was unquestioned when he ran the Post. 

Ahead of its annual meeting in May, Graham Holdings circulated an annual report on its business projections heading into the next year. The company notes City Cast faces challenges in the form of competition from other local news podcasts in cities around the country.

“Several companies operate large national networks of local daily newsletters, notably Axios and 6am City, both of which have many more subscribers than City Cast,” the report says. “There are also single-city daily newsletters—often created by the local newspaper—in every city where City Cast is located. On the podcasting side, public radio stations in most City Cast markets create local podcasts, as do some commercial radio stations. City Cast competes for advertising dollars with all these newsletter and podcast competitors, as well as with local radio, newspaper, TV and digital outlets.”

Despite this prognosis from the accountants, Plotz remains optimistic. 

“Our podcast is kind of sticky,” he says. “Once people have it in their feeds, it tends to stick there. And our audiences are just going up. And that’s heartening.”

Newspapers across the country have experienced a drop in website traffic and circulation since Donald Trump left office, but the declines at the Washington Post have been especially painful.

Post website traffic took a nosedive from about 140 million visits in April 2020, dropping pretty steadily to now less than 55 million, according to the most recent numbers obtained by City Paper, which are not published on the Post’s site. That’s a 60 percent drop in just a few years.

The decrease was so precipitous that the Post stopped sharing highlights of its web traffic with the public. A tab on the Post site that reads Audience & Traffic was updated consistently for several years. But about 15 months ago, the paper stopped disclosing those figures.

In the 11 years since Jeff Bezos bought the Post, he has said little publicly about his view of readership numbers, website traffic, or profitability generally. Current and former Posties often say that while Bezos’ wealth allows him to worry less about the bottom line than most corporations, he is also not obligated to run a charity.

David Mindich, a media and journalism professor at Temple University and the author of Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News, says the “alarming” contractions in the industry are damaging newspapers. But he says “the election might end up being good for the Washington Post as the city becomes more central to our conversation.”

The Post officially declined to provide City Paper with the most up-to-date audience and readership figures, or comment specifically about its circulation and website traffic numbers.

According to publicly available data, Post website traffic dropped to 111 million in January 2021, 88 million in April 2021, 68 million in August 2022, 65 million in December 2022, and then hit 58 million in January 2023.

An internal “traffic sheet” obtained from a source with access to the numbers shows 55 million monthly web visits in February 2024, the paper’s lowest in several years. By comparison, the number of Post web visitors is below the New York Times (82 million), USA Today (63 million), and Forbes (60 million). And behind Vox Media, CBS, CNN, FOX, and others—all of which generate more website traffic than traditional print rivals.

It’s not just a decline in digital readers. Print circulation, the number of folks who buy the paper at a newsstand or have one delivered to their homes, has declined as well.

Most recent circulation numbers show that the Wall Street Journal remains the leader in print circulation, followed by the New York Times. The New York Post (disclosure, I worked there for six years) is now the No. 3 ranked newspaper in the country, having overtaken the Post, which fell to the fourth spot, according to the Alliance for Audited Media, a nonprofit that tracks media circulation. USA Today comes in at No. 5, followed by the LA Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Many other big city daily papers, from the Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Dallas Morning News, lag far behind the Post, but that’s not a lot of consolation for a company that retains a national ambition.

Many big newspapers, along with many regional and small papers, are losing circulation each year and trying desperately to replace those readers with digital ones—and with paying customers. That’s a challenge in an era when many younger news consumers rely on social media to stay informed.

Former Post media reporter Paul Farhi, who left the paper in 2023, has been documenting the trend for years. The prospects for turning young readers into paying subscribers is grim.

PR folks at the Post did not explain why the company stopped sharing digital audience data 15 months ago, nor did they have any comment on what the current numbers portend for the future.

Executive Editor Sally Buzbee did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Karl Wells, who became chief growth officer on Feb. 12—one of the first big announcements from Will Lewis since he took the helm as publisher late last year.

“Karl’s proven track record of establishing advantageous, comprehensive growth strategies is unrivaled in this industry and he is indeed a subscriptions wizard,” Lewis said of Wells in a press release. “His addition to our leadership team brings a deep knowledge of data-driven subscription businesses, a thorough understanding of audiences, and an expertise in maximizing revenue return through multiple streams.”

That seems to make Wells the point man for the Post’s efforts to grow, as his portfolio includes “cross-functional business growth, including subscription strategy, partnerships, licensing, and data and analytics.” 

And in an interview with Semafor’s Ben Smith, Lewis alluded to various subscription models and marketing tricks as potential solutions to turn the ship around. But the Post’s specific short- or long-term strategy to counter the downward trend remains unclear.

Wells, who made his chops in the British news industry like Lewis, worked for Dow Jones in New York, and will continue living there rather than moving to D.C., according to the Post—a revealing allowance by Lewis. Wells did not respond to requests for comment.

Declines in website traffic mean less revenue, but the news business is also vulnerable in other ways. Economic uncertainty can impact advertising spending, which damages another vital stream of revenue.

In the past year, NPR, the LA Times, the Post, and other news organizations announced buyouts or layoffs as their website traffic dropped and their revenue dipped. Some outlets closed altogether.

Many analysts suggest the past year has been among the worst ever recorded in the media industry, with a wide variety of factors impacting the cutbacks: There’s less Trump coverage, but many readers feel exhausted and are consuming less news. And the Post itself has acknowledged that many of the cutbacks were almost inevitable given the growth that surged during the Trump years.

To that end, the Nieman Lab recently wrote that “a greater sense of normalcy may be good for people’s mental health, but not news profits,” while noting the various ways in which the drop in news consumption is hurting newspapers.

Under former Post publisher Fred Ryan, who ran the paper for nine years prior to Lewis, the newsroom swelled from 580 to 1,000, before dropping back down to about 900 following the aggressive buyouts of December 2023. Under Ryan, the Post trumpeted international growth by noting plans to add 15 new positions overseas as it worked to publish breaking news around the clock. 

The new hires included a senior head of audience focused on international growth, visual reporters in both news hubs, global audience editors focused on search engine optimization, social media, and analytics, and two newsletter editors aimed at developing international audience growth through email, according to the Post.

As Lewis ushers the Post into what is widely viewed as one of the most bizarre national presidential campaigns ever, the paper will be under pressure for the marquee writers to help distinguish themselves and build the readership numbers back up.

Ironically, two of the biggest recent front page stories in the Post have been local: the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and the flip-flop on the Wizards and Capitals leaving D.C. for Virginia.

If you follow District politics, chances are you’ve come across Bill Rice and Dorothy Brizill.

They are regular and persistent attendees at local government hearings and press conferences, often sitting alongside and among the press corps, and have been for decades. Mayor Muriel Bowser, like most D.C. mayors before her, knows them by name. And Council Chair Phil Mendelson acknowledges them at his regular legislative briefings.

Neither consider themselves a reporter. Brizill describes herself as a “watchdog” while Rice says he’s an “advocate.” Both have run for elected office—each taking a turn at running (unsuccessfully) for seats on the D.C. Council. Both are self-admitted pack rats—each amassing stacks of boxes of yellowed clippings, files, and other mementos from a lifetime of gadflying.

Despite their unofficial titles, Rice and Brizill have dedicated the better part of 30 to 40 years to the proceedings, leaving an indelible impact on local D.C. media and political circles.

Various mayors over the years have tolerated them or despised them. The same could be said of their relationships with some local journalists.

“I don’t mind Bill or Dorothy showing up and asking questions … they are well intended and have deep knowledge of the issues,” says Mark Segraves, the unofficial dean of the D.C. press corps as one of the longest active reporters covering city politics. “But they are not reporters. Bill is an activist … and Dorothy is an activist.”

Segraves once had a showdown with Brizill when he walked into the press room at the Wilson Building and found her sitting at his desk. “I was pretty steamed,” he recalls.

In interviews with City Paper, both Rice and Brizill describe how they review the mayor’s daily schedule and attend events to which only reporters receive official invitations.

In most other big American cities, reporters are required to present press credentials to attend such events, but D.C. requires no such identification.

The District government decided against issuing media credentials nine years ago after the Metropolitan Police Department ended media credentialing. MPD Chief Pamela Smith declined to talk about the issue, but her staff says MPD abandoned the practice in 2015 because reporters have no more or less access to crime scenes than the general public.

But considering Rice and Brizill as reporters misses the distinctive angle that each of them bring to the table. They’ve both been observing District politics like hawks for more than a generation, and several political observers note that they have considerably more experience than the average, often youthful D.C. reporter. They both bring a historical perspective to bear when they pose tough questions.

For that reason, many observers value the role that Rice and Brizill play in the city’s quirky media landscape—throwing them into the same category as the late Mark Plotkin, who blurred the line between reporting and advocacy.

The Washington Post (and City Paper) has quoted Brizill in dozens of District news stories, and she estimates that she’s provided “uncredited” news tips to countless other reporters over the years via her government watchdog organization and website DC Watch, which is no longer active.

Vincent McCraw, who worked for the Detroit News for 20 years after serving as a city editor at the Washington Times, recalls getting documents from Brizill back in the 1990’s about suspected wrongdoing by District officials countless times.

“She was dogged … she was just relentless,” recalls McCraw. “She would come by the press room and talk about whatever she was working on.”

Josh Gibson, the Council’s communications director, notes that many reporters benefit via osmosis from having Rice and Brizill at press conferences because of their memories and firsthand knowledge of long-ago events.

“Dorothy and Bill have decades of institutional memory that make them truly unique resources to us here in the Wilson Building,” Gibson says.

Rice has emerged as a great source of information thanks to the photo documentation he has assembled in recent years on X (formerly Twitter). Since he attends nearly every event held by the mayor, and posts his photos on his X account, he’s managed to create an unparalleled visual timeline of all the things Bowser does in a day: fundraisers, speeches, birthday parties, ribbon cuttings, and just everything else.

It’s not uncommon for reporters to ask Brizill for her take on political missteps by D.C. officials, or for news producers or editors to scan Rice’s social media for insight into who is standing alongside the mayor at ribbon cuttings or after-hours celebrations.

So who are these two unusual figures in the District’s media ecosystem?

Rice, 82, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941. His father worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee after the war helping resettle Jewish refugees. So Rice grew up in Paris, Geneva, and Frankfurt until 1955 (his younger brother was born in Paris).

After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, Rice went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a doctorate in chemistry. His first big job was working for the Federal Energy Office (now the Department of Energy) during the Nixon administration, but he also spent a year working for former New York City Mayor John Lindsay.

Rice spent most of his professional career in the field of energy and environmental consulting, but he says that upon settling in D.C. he very quickly became attached to the local political and historical quirks and wanted to engage on the ground rather than in the more distant world of federal policy.

As far back as the 1970s, Rice threw himself into District politics. He became familiar with the various characters rising to power as the city itself was emerging into the Home Rule era, which started in 1973.

It would be another 25 years before Rice made his first of two runs for the Council. He was a candidate in 1998 and 2006, winning a tepid endorsement from Washington Post in 1998 (the paper told readers that they should vote for Rice, Phil Mendelson, Linda Moody, or Greg Rhett in the crowded primary race. Mendelson won an at-large seat that year).

It was during those years that Rice worked his first and only stint as a reporter. He contributed articles to Regardies, the Georgetown Dish, the Intowner, and the Current, and penned an op-ed column for the Washington Post back in 1996. He says he loved writing about what mattered to D.C. residents, especially in his Tenleytown neighborhood (he also spent some time living in Dupont Circle).

Later, Rice did a short stint working for the District government when he served as spokesperson for the District Department of Transportation under Dan Tangherlini. He would then work with the city’s Office of Property Management (now the Department of General Services), too. In both roles, Rice became comfortable attending press conferences and rubbing elbows with reporters.

“I saw it as my job to know the media and know what they were talking about,” Rice says, explaining why he was frequently spotted at press conferences even when his responsibilities were sometimes unrelated to the event.

In recent years, Rice has embraced the cause he says he was destined for: a crusade to have the city’s various archival records all consolidated in one spot for safeguarding and preservation. Rice has made the issue his passion, and he says he asks direct questions of politicians only if they pertain to the archives (though he has asked about other topics, too).

Rice says his basement is packed to the rafters with bits of political and District government memorabilia. “I have a marriage that is threatened by my level of accumulated archival material in my basement,” he says, though he declined to let me come take a look.

Rice says the city’s plan to open a DC Archives in the former Building #41 space on the University of the District of Columbia campus is the culmination of his life’s work. His wife, Myrna Sislen, who owned Middle C Music and is now working on a public art initiative at Cobb Park, is as pleased as he is with the city’s commitment to preserving history.

“There’s nobody else holding onto this collection,” Rice says, smiling.

For her part, Brizill has spent more than 30 years at the helm of DC Watch—a name she and her husband coined for the government watchdog effort they launched in response to the utter dysfunction of the entire District government in the early days following Home Rule. 

Brizill, 74, was born in Queens, New York. She went to Queens College and Columbia University before moving to the District to take a job at the Brookings Institution and later in the U.S. Department of State working under Cyrus Vance, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter. She also did a spell working on international trade for New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Brizill’s husband, Gary Imhoff, 75, was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and spent his war time on a farm in Missouri. Imhoff identifies himself as vice president and webmaster of DC Watch, but also he’s an accomplished scholar who has published Learning in Two Languages: From Conflict and Controversy to Cooperative Reorganization of Schools and The Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting of America.

Brizill says Imhoff attended Harvard University and earned his master’s in Black literature at Howard University, which is what brought him to D.C. back in the 1960s. He would later work at the World Bank.

According to Brizill, the two met in the ’60s. She was living in Adams Morgan and needed to find a new place to live. Imhoff was living in Columbia Heights and needed a roommate. They were out with a mutual friend, and over wine Imhoff asked her if she wanted to move into his house as a roommate.

“I said, ‘Gary, there is no way in the world that my dad would be OK with me moving in with you.’ So Gary says, ‘Alright, well, would you at least consider going out on a date with me if you can’t move in?’” Brizill recently told City Paper at the JW Marriott hotel, one of several spots she camps out when she’s covering news at the Wilson Building.

Her start as a government watchdog began in the 1970s when she was disgusted by the open drug dealing, gun violence, and prostitution happening next to their home on Girard Street NW. Brizill would meet with MPD officers and city officials to nudge them into action against “dealers and pimps,” who in many cases operated out of abandoned properties with seeming impunity, she says. She was ahead of her time in terms of the neighborhood watch groups and Listservs that would become standard a generation later.

“Users and sellers would gather,” Brizill says. “We could see the whole thing because some of these houses didn’t even have windows or doors.” Eventually, she began to get some response from the District government, and she and Imhoff later christened their efforts to push for accountability as DC Watch, the website that went live in 1997—more than two years before the D.C. government website launched. In those early years, Brizill says, DC Watch included phone numbers for police substations, building inspectors, and elementary schools—information that wasn’t available elsewhere on the web.

Over the years, Brizill’s frustration with the District government’s dysfunction expanded beyond law enforcement. She has taken on inspectors, educators, and analysts, but her deep disdain for the DC Board of Elections is her primary target of late. 

Brizill ran for the Ward 1 seat on the D.C. Council in 1994, but finished second behind Frank Smith in the Democratic primary.

For many years, Brizill spent Election Day driving around to 40 or more precincts and talking with workers about what was going on. On election night she would post up at the BOE’s offices, watching as the ballots came in and were counted.

Her partners in this notable level of dedication and observation were typically Jonetta Rose Barras (who wrote City Paper’s Loose Lips column from 2000 to 2001), and on occasion, local journalist and author Harry Jaffe. “I wanted to see for myself what was going on,” Brizill says. “Sometimes Jonetta would drive us.”

Brizill frequently published her findings and observations on the DC Watch website, which was at its peak during the Control Board years under Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry.

John Hill, executive director of the DC Financial Control Board when the District government was in receivership, recalls Brizill attending every hearing, meeting, and press conference during that time.

“Although she would be allowed at press conferences, she wouldn’t be given information on an embargoed basis as regular reporters would be given,” Hill says. “She felt like she was a reporter, however we saw her more as a blogger. We tried to treat her with respect.”

Brizill and Imhoff experienced every homeowner’s worst nightmare in May 2012 when their three-story brick home on Girard Street NW burned down. Nearly everything inside was destroyed, including the computer servers that allowed the couple to maintain DC Watch. The website has remained frozen in time to 2012.

Worse yet, according to Brizill, all their paper files documenting 40 years of District government operations and malfeasance were also consumed by the fire. Brizill has suspicions about the origin of the blaze, but she declines to talk about it.

Brizill and Imhoff rented a place in the District for many years after the fire while they dealt with insurance and repairs. They now have a new apartment just across the line in Maryland. Since Brizill doesn’t drive, she’s farther away from the Wilson Building than ever, but no less committed to covering it.

“I’ve got several big projects I’m working on,” she says. “It’s always something.”

Out of Ink covers media issues relevant to the DMV. Send tips, suggestions, or feedback to vmorris@washingtoncitypaper.com and connect with him on X @vincentmorris.