The ‘Last Straw’ for Will Lewis at The Washington Post? Jeff Bezos Reportedly Hated His ‘Callous’ Super Bowl Partying After Massive Layoffs

Photo by Raphael Lafargue/Abaca/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos was reportedly angry with now-former CEO Will Lewis partying it up in San Francisco during Super Bowl Week, right as he was laying off hundreds of employees at the paper.

The Financial Times on Saturday night reported that was the “last straw” for Lewis, according to one newsroom source.

“Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl thing,” the source told FT.

That report came out right after Lewis stepped down as the chief executive and publisher of The Washington Post on Saturday evening.

“Senior management at The Post were livid when they discovered that Lewis was attending festivities around the Super Bowl in San Francisco around the time of the news of the jobs cuts,” the source told FT. “It came off as ‘callous.'”

Lewis heading to the Bay Area was noticed by a number of journalists this week on X. His trip coincided with WaPo cutting around 300 jobs — an editorial bloodbath that resulted in the shuttering of its sports and books departments, as well as the elimination of many foreign reporting positions and Metro jobs.

FT’s report from Anna Nicolaou, Christopher Grimes, and Daniel Thomas said there was a sense Lewis had lost the support of the newsroom after he failed to rally behind reporter Hannah Natanson last month, when she the FBI raided her home and took multiple devices.

The raid was seen by many WaPo staffers as a “further escalation” by President Donald Trump in his battle against the mainstream press, FT reported.

And the chasm between Lewis and his newsroom only widened last week following the massive round of layoffs. Senior editors were “furious” with his lack of communication on the matter, the report added.

Notably, Bezos — who made his fortune as the founder of Amazon — did not mention Lewis in his statement on Saturday.

“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity. Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success,” Bezos said. “The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus. Jeff, along with Matt and Adam, are positioned to lead The Post into an exciting and thriving next chapter.”

Lewis is being replaced by CFO Jeff D’Onofrio, who joined the paper in June 2025. He was the CFO of Raptive for three years before joining WaPo, and prior to that he was the CEO at Tumblr.

Status reporter Natalie Korach posted D’Onofrio’s message to staffers on X on Saturday night. He acknowledged he was taking the reins after a “hard week” for the paper, but that he was looking to lead the paper into a “sustainable, successful future.”

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