Will Lewis, the newly appointed publisher and C.E.O. of The Washington Post, was midway into his inaugural meeting with staff on Monday when he was asked by one employee if he could reverse the company’s recent decision to cut 240 jobs, or roughly 10 percent of the workforce. The question alone seemed to evidence significant rank-and-file indifference to the business considerations of the for-profit, privately owned company. After all, the Post is suffering from $100 million in annual losses after years of editorial ennui and financial mismanagement. Lewis’s first order of business, as mandated by his new boss Jeff Bezos, is to return the company to profitability.