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Good Will Hunting

While its executive editor, Matt Murray, was overseeing the fallout of the devastating layoffs on K Street, The Washington Post’s absentee leader and C.E.O., Will Lewis, was pregaming with friends at the Super Bowl. Yes, the optics are terrible, but is an aloof and often remote C.E.O. the right guy to save the Post?

Matt Murray
Matt Murray’s understanding, I was later told by a Post source familiar with the matter, was that Will Lewis was in his office on K Street working on the rollout of the restructuring. After the photo of Will in San Francisco went viral, the same source told me that Matt had not been aware that Will left Washington for the Super Bowl, and only learned about it from social media. Photo: Robert Miller/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
February 6, 2026

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On Thursday evening, about 36 hours after The Washington Post conducted its now-infamous Zoom bloodletting ritual that sacrificed the livelihoods of more than 300 employees, the paper’s much-maligned publisher and C.E.O., Will Lewis, was spotted—by a former Postie, no less—on the red carpet at the NFL Honors ceremony in San Francisco. Will attends the Super Bowl and the surrounding fanfare every year, a work-and-perk trip that neatly coincides with his long-standing tradition of attending the game with old friends. But in light of his conspicuous absence amid the layoffs, the sighting triggered another round of hostilities from a Washington in-crowd that has spent the past week turning Will-hating into its own professional sport.