Meet the new boss of The Washington Post. Same as the old boss.
Jeff D’Onofrio has officially been named publisher and CEO of the Post. It’s a job he has been doing for a while now. He was named interim publisher and CEO seven months ago, taking over for the controversial Will Lewis, who left the paper just days after massive layoffs cut more than a third of the Post’s newsroom staff.
In an email to staff, Post owner Jeff Bezos said, “Over these months, I’ve heard from many that Jeff has been doing an outstanding job, and that’s been my experience as well. Jeff has led with discipline and care — following the data and sweating the details, and he has my complete confidence as we chart our future.”
D’Onofrio joined the Post in June 2025 as chief financial officer. Before that, he ran Tumblr and held senior positions at Yahoo, Google and Major League Baseball.
Now D’Onofrio takes over what The Washington Post’s Scott Nover accurately described as “one of the most revered jobs in American journalism” — a seat once held by the legendary Katharine Graham.
In an email to staff, D’Onofrio wrote, “The Washington Post will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that we position it for the next 150 years, and I will be working with all of you to do just that.”
He added that “we will build a modern media company with new revenue streams that move us from breakeven to profitability, so we can reinvest in our journalism.”
Nover wrote, “D’Onofrio’s appointment is a vote of confidence from Bezos following a rocky stretch for the newspaper, which has seen buyouts, layoffs and several leadership changes in recent years — most recently the departure of Opinion editor Adam O’Neal.”
A Post spokesperson said Wednesday that the Post is on track to break even this year and end 2026 on its closest path to profitability in five years. Of course, when you cut a big chunk of the staff, the chances of saving money improve dramatically.
However, the journalists who remain continue to churn out excellent and critical work. That’s a credit to their talent and hard work.
The spokesperson added that the Post has sold more than 300,000 individual subscriptions in 2026.
NOTUS — the rising news outlet in Washington, D.C. — has a new name: The Washington Sun. Credit The New York Times’ Katie Robertson with the clever lead: “Here comes the Sun.”
Robertson wrote, “The name, said the editor in chief, Tim Grieve, is intended to reflect the outlet’s expansion into local news and sports coverage in the wake of The Washington Post’s staff cuts at the beginning of the year.”
Grieve told Robertson, “We really wanted Washington in the name of our publication to more clearly convey that we cover Washington, both sort of political Washington and local Washington.”
NOTUS, now the Sun, was started in 2023 by Robert Allbritton, who co-founded Politico. Initially, the site focused on government but expanded to include metro and sports news after the major cuts in those areas at the Post.
Grieve told Robertson, “I think people are really hungry particularly for the local and sports coverage that has faded away with what’s happened at The Post and with local newspapers around the country.”
Robertson wrote, “At the beginning of the year, the NOTUS newsroom consisted of 45 people. The number, Mr. Grieve said, has now more than doubled, to 110. Many new hires are former members of The Post’s staff, including the food critic Tom Sietsema, the columnist Dana Milbank and a slew of sports reporters.”
Late last month, President Donald Trump — locked into his inexplicable feud with Canada — signed a petty executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
Trump may want to call it Lake America, but one of the world’s biggest and best-known news agencies will not. The Associated Press has told its staff and other news organizations who follow AP style to continue calling it Lake Ontario.
The Washington Post’s Amy B Wang wrote, “The AP’s guidance says Trump’s executive order affects only how the U.S. government refers to the lake, and Canada and other countries are not required to recognize the name change.”
AP spokesman Patrick Maks said in a statement, “The Associated Press will refer to Lake Ontario by its original name, including the name Trump has chosen when relevant. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are recognizable to broad audiences.”
This is similar to the AP’s decision to continue referring to the body of water between Florida and Texas as the Gulf of Mexico, despite a Trump executive order renaming it the Gulf of America.
New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson at an event in New York in July. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Most of the media attention about an upcoming TV season premiere has been on “60 Minutes,” which begins its 59th season on Sunday. But another longtime show is also closing in on the start of a new season.
“Saturday Night Live” begins its 52nd season on Sept. 26.
On Wednesday, the show announced some of the upcoming hosts for the new season. Jalen Brunson of the world champion New York Knicks will host the Sept. 26 season opener with musical guest KATSEYE. The following week’s show will be hosted by actress Dakota Johnson with musical guest Turnstile.
Comedian Shane Gillis returns to host Oct. 10 with musical guest Rosalía. Actress Inde Navarrette, known for her breakout role in the hit horror movie “Obsession,” will host on Halloween with musical guest Gracie Abrams.
Additional hosts and musical guests will be announced later.
We’re still not completely sure about cast changes. Chloe Fineman, who had been on the show for seven seasons, announced earlier this summer that she was leaving. Variety’s Ethan Shanfeld reported that writer Martin Herlihy, one-third of the popular short-film comedy team “Please Don’t Destroy,” is leaving after five seasons.
Other than that, it has been a quiet summer for a show that usually has at least a handful of cast additions and departures.
In Wednesday’s newsletter, I had a brief item in the media tidbits about a Page Six story saying the upcoming season of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on ABC would be his last. An unnamed source told reporter Carlos Greer that Kimmel’s contract was not being renewed.
However, an ABC spokesperson said, “(This) information is inaccurate — any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative.”
This reminded LateNighter’s Bill Carter of another time a story was planted in the New York Post that suggested a popular late-night host was on his way out. Carter wrote the 1994 book “The Late Shift,” which chronicled the battle between Jay Leno and David Letterman to replace Johnny Carson as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show.”
Carter pointed to the New York Post’s Feb. 11, 1991, story that said NBC was looking to dump the legendary Carson. Carter wrote in his piece Wednesday, “I found the person who planted the story in the Post. He worked for Helen Kushnick, then the manager of Jay Leno, and he related how he and Helen hatched this plan to use a manufactured story in the Post in their effort to force NBC’s hand in moving Carson out so Jay could take over.”
Carter added, “Not one NBC executive had discussed this with Kushnick or her source. It was completely fabricated. And it landed like a grenade in NBC’s offices — and in Carson’s heart. He was devastated by this public diminishment of his reputation. And not mollified by NBC’s response at the time, which was also tepid: the network acknowledged its debt to Carson and said he would be the one to decide when to leave.”
Isn’t it interesting that both the Carson and Kimmel stories appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post? Anyway, Carter asks that if this latest Post story about Kimmel was planted, who was it?
Carter wrote, “This time, it’s not likely to be another comic’s manager angling for Kimmel’s job; odds are that ABC, like CBS — which shed its star Stephen Colbert, himself the subject of endless attacks by the President — would close its late-night shop after a Kimmel exit. That leaves either political motivation (Murdoch’s paper is a frequent megaphone for Trump) or possibly one side or the other maneuvering over a new contract for the host.”
Whoever it was, this story will be interesting to track over the next year. And maybe Carter can have a follow-up to the page-turning “The Late Shift.”
Be sure to check out the latest story in our Poynter 50 series, which looks back at 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century.
Phoenix Chapital writes: “Before true crime was everywhere, there was ‘Dateline.’”
Chapital writes:
When you think murder, you think “Dateline.”
When NBC launched “Dateline” as a newsmagazine, no one knew the hold it would eventually have on American culture.
Thirty-four years later, “Dateline” has helped make true crime one of the most enduring genres in media, influencing rival shows like “20/20” and “48 Hours,” as well as the wave of true-crime podcasts that followed.
If you love “Dateline” — and, hey, who doesn’t? — you’re going to love Chapital’s story.
- For The Atlantic, Erik Slavin with “The Inside Story of What Happened at Stars and Stripes.”
- The Washington Post’s Violet Jira with “Newsom’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News is set for March 2028 trial.”
- Another story about “60 Minutes” as we move closer to Sunday’s season premiere. It’s the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint with “‘60 Minutes’ Returns in a Major Test for New Leadership.”
- Jessica Tarlov, the liberal voice on Fox News’ “The Five,” has signed a three-year contract extension with the network. Here’s a superb profile of Tarlov from Marie Claire’s Noor Ibrahim: “Fox News’s Favorite Nasty Woman.”
- Variety’s Brian Steinberg with “ABC News Adds Rachel Scott, Rhiannon Ally to Weekend ‘Good Morning America.’”
- Republicans are holding a “midterm convention” this week in Dallas. It started Wednesday and will wrap up tonight. Here’s more from CNN’s Steve Contorno and Alayna Treene: “How Republicans — and Trump — are grappling with the party’s future after he leaves the stage.”
- Speaking of the GOP event, here’s Mediaite’s Zachary Leeman with “‘You Are the Worst of All!’ Trump Snaps At Reporter Asking About Republicans Skipping Midterm Convention.”
- The New York Times’ Peter Baker with “60 Posts in 10 Hours: How Trump’s Social Media Reflects His Version of Reality.”
- Sad news as longtime ESPN hockey analyst Barry Melrose has passed away. He was 70. Melrose, a former NHL coach in Los Angeles and Tampa Bay, first joined ESPN in 1996. He left the network after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2023. Here’s more from ESPN.
- On Tuesday night, the U.S. Open tennis tournament had a splendid quarterfinal match in which American Ben Shelton defeated Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz in five sets. Actually, I should say the match was Tuesday night and Wednesday morning — it didn’t end until 3:33 a.m. Eastern time. That led to Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Day writing what everyone was thinking: “Sorry, but Tennis at 3:33 a.m. Isn’t Cool. It’s Ridiculous.”
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Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.
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