Fred Ryan to leave Washington Post after nine years as publisher

Washington - Fred Ryan, the publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post for most of the decade since it was bought by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will leave the company in August, he announced Monday.

Ryan, 68, will lead the newly formed nonpartisan Center on Public Civility at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Patty Stonesifer, the founding chief executive of the Gates Foundation and more recently the director of the Amazon board, was named the interim CEO of The Post on Monday, starting immediately, and is leading the search for Ryan's replacement.

In an interview, Ryan said he has long been passionate about the issues at the core of the center's mission, saying "the decline in civility is threatening the foundation of our democracy." A former Reagan administration official, Ryan called it "a bookend for something I did early on in my career."

He also said he has Bezos's full support in this move, saying their relationship "could not be closer." The Amazon founder shares his enthusiasm in addressing the erosion of civility in all aspects of public life, Ryan said, and provided the initial funding for planning and design of the center. (Ryan would not disclose the amount but called it "a very meaningful gift.")

In a memo to Post staff, Bezos said he was "deeply grateful" to Ryan for leading The Post and praised him for focusing on "the intersection of journalism and technology."

Ryan is leaving The Post at a tumultuous time in the media industry of layoffs and declining audience numbers, to which The Post has not been immune. Ryan said his departure "has nothing to do with that" and "I firmly believe there is a sound model for successful journalism and The Washington Post is well positioned to do that," he added. "I have no doubt that the high-quality journalism of the standard of The Washington Post will always be successful."

Bezos's 2013 purchase of The Post was a watershed event for the media company, ending 80 years of stewardship by the Graham family as he took the company private. One of his first major moves was to hire Ryan, the founding CEO of Politico, whom he charged with expanding the reach of The Post's ambitions into a national and global news operation.

At the time, the majority of The Post's revenue came from its print business and it had about 35,000 digital subscribers. Now, Ryan said, the majority of The Post's revenue comes from its digital business and it has about 2 million digital subscribers.

Ryan presided over The Post during a period of rapid expansion at The Post, growing from around 600 newsroom employees to nearly double that size today.

His tenure also coincided with the chaotic years of the Trump presidency, when The Post and other media companies saw record levels of digital traffic and a boom in subscriptions. In the final weeks of the Trump administration in January 2021, The Post counted 3 million digital subscribers.

But those figures have leveled off after Trump left office and the coronavirus pandemic ebbed. The Post ended the last year in the red after what Ryan called six years of "significant growth and profit." (The Post is a private company that does not disclose its financials.)

In a statement, Stonesifer said: "I have both respect and passion for the mission and the journalism of The Washington Post - one of the greatest newsrooms in the world - and I am delighted to join this team in supporting the values and sustaining the work of this important institution."