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.

Even by those established standards, Will’s class-cutting inspired a particularly vitriolic round of shaming on X. New York Times Washington correspondent Mark Mazzetti called Will “a complete fraud.” Former Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins, a vociferous critic, labeled him “a tone deaf jellyfish,” among other things. Ashley Parker, the former Post senior national correspondent who accused the institution of “murder” earlier this week, sought to accuse Will of a penchant for revelry—an observation many Post insiders have shared in hushed tones over the years—noting that he looked typically “rosy-cheeked” in the photo, and then adding emojis for beers, a tropical cocktail, and a martini. (She subsequently deleted the tweet; Will did not respond to a request for comment.)

Offline, however, the most notable and inadvertently damning reaction came from the Post’s own executive editor, Matt Murray. In Will’s absence, Matt had been tasked with delivering the hard news to employees on Wednesday over Zoom, as well as explaining the business rationale behind the restructuring in a companywide memo—the kind of message not typically delivered by an editor who oversees content, but rather by the chief executive who runs the company, or occasionally even by the owner. Yes, yes, Jeff Bezos has a lot on his plate, but he was also involved in this restructuring and has weighed in on some of the Post’s previous directional changes.

Matt has also spearheaded the public relations effort more broadly; on Thursday, before the photo of Will materialized, he defended the layoffs in a wide-ranging conversation with me on my podcast, The Grill Room. In our discussion, he said Will had decided it was best to have divisional leaders relay the layoffs to their various teams. But Will had been “involved in overseeing all the different moves,” he told me, and, as he’d told Fox News earlier in the day, Will “had a lot of things to tend to.”

Matt’s understanding, I was later told by a Post source familiar with the matter, was that Will 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. “I think we all assumed he was in D.C., up in his office,” the source said.

The episode hints at a deeper communication breakdown between the Post’s chief executive and executive editor that seems increasingly unsustainable. Officially, Matt is out there owning the layoffs and defending the new strategy: “I’m the one that’s responsible for carrying it out and accountable to Will and Jeff for it,” he told me. Matt played the company man throughout the interview, but his less-than-robust defense of Will, whom he previously worked under at The Wall Street Journal, betrayed a deeper fissure. When I noted Will’s managerial shortcomings and the general antipathy toward him, Matt acknowledged that there were “clearly some things we have to work through there,” and then said: “I think there are some expectations placed on Will and the publisher that are a little different here than I’ve seen at other places, and so I’m still getting used to that myself.”

The Post’s yearslong trauma has inspired a lot of feelings among Washington insiders, obviously, as well as a broader debate among media insiders that tends to coalesce around a false dichotomy. With every round of layoffs, the newsroom and its champions accuse the new leadership of destroying all that was sacred about their beloved institution—a “murder,” “self-inflicted brand destruction,” etcetera—while the front office and its sympathizers fault the newsroom for being too nostalgic and naive about the need for change. “For all the emotions and strong feelings and passion and commitment of some of the former Posties,” Matt told me, “we are living in a different kind of a world.” As I have noted, a similar dynamic is playing out at Bari Weiss’s CBS News and, in a more subtle way, at Mark Thompson’s CNN.

The preoccupation with this debate tends to distract from a more fundamental strategic challenge, which is that it is impossible to make any forward progress without a leader who is capable of setting the direction and then finessing the organization into alignment. Will hasn’t merely given up on that effort—at times, he seems to be actively trying to sabotage it. Asking his editorial chief to defend his layoffs and then skipping town was only the latest manifestation of this bizarre and unprofessional behavior. He is routinely described by Post sources as an absentee leader; his refusal to engage with employees has inspired resentment among staff and hurt the paper’s ability to retain staff. Parker’s errant tweet also hinted at an objection to his drinking at work functions—which, I’m told, multiple outgoing staffers cited in their exit interviews.

The Post has a long row to hoe. When I asked Matt what he hoped to achieve in the years ahead, he cited obvious targets: sub growth, deeper engagement, big scoops, etcetera, before inadvertently betraying just how low the Post’s fortunes have fallen: “We want to be relevant,” he said. Even among those who endorse the layoffs as a necessary step on the Post’s path toward profitability and renewed relevance, there is a broad and sustained consensus that the current leadership isn’t going to get them there.