Welcome back to In The Room.

Tonight, a breaking development in Jeff Bezos’s WaPo C.E.O. search, where one of the two finalists has taken his name out of the running. Plus, news and notes on the Hunterbrook hedge fund-newsco hybrid and Roger Lynch’s Condé Nast correction.

Following a four-months-long search by interim chief executive Patty Stonesifer and the Sucherman executive search firm, Bezos solicited six-page memos from five semi-finalist candidates and conducted one-on-one Zoom interviews with each of them. He then winnowed the group down to two finalists—Josh Steiner, the former banker and government official and current Bloomberg L.P. lieutenant, and Will Lewis, the former Dow Jones C.E.O.—both of whom he interviewed in person last week during hours-long meetings that were followed by lunch, per sources familiar. In 2021, after interviewing candidates for the Post executive editor position, Bezos similarly invited the candidates and their significant others over for dinner, which included Wagyu beef prepared three ways.

Such diligence is surely warranted. Selecting a chief executive is a consequential decision, the sort of sliding door moment that has the power to change the course of history. In 2012, Turner C.E.O. Phil Kent came very close to choosing Mark Shapiro, a veteran of ESPN and Dick Clark Productions, over former NBCUniversal C.E.O. Jeff Zucker for the top job at CNN. One wonders how Shapiro, now the president of Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor, would have navigated the Trump 2016 candidacy, to say nothing of the years that followed. By the same token, one wonders where the Post’s business, which is currently hemorrhaging $100 million a year, might be today if Ryan hadn’t courted Steve and Jean Case for an introduction to Bezos at the Alfalfa Club dinner all those years ago.

Alas, sometimes these decisions get made for you. I am now told that Steiner has taken his name out of the running. Whether this was due to his own reservations about the job following his meeting with Bezos, or an inclination that he wasn’t going to get the job, or both (or something else altogether), is unknown to all but those directly involved. Reached for comment, the Post’s chief communications officer Kathy Baird told me the process for selecting a C.E.O. “is still underway, and we are likely to announce in November.”

Notably, some within the Washington media firmament viewed Steiner, with his note-perfect resume, as an obvious frontrunner. (Some of these same people also wondered why Bezos and Stonesifer went with Sucherman, which has more experience in television and entertainment, over a standard-bearer like Spencer Stuart.) Regardless, in retrospect, perhaps Steiner was always a challenging fit for the position—a highly accomplished veteran of both finance and government who had climbed high enough on the Bloomberg L.P. ladder that he coveted neither the money nor the perceived glory (nor the headaches), more of an investor than an operator at this stage of his career. Alternatively, maybe Bezos simply decided he needed someone with more publishing experience.

In any event, Will Lewis is now in the catbird seat. The longtime Murdoch lieutenant, a British journalist-turned-media executive who rose through the ranks of News Corp. before becoming C.E.O. of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal in 2014, has his own notable bonafides. Lewis steered the Journal through a period of digital transformation and growth during the Trump era, then stepped down in 2020 and launched a digital news startup that, also in retrospect, may have served as a waystation for his broader ambitions. (Lewis’s startup, The News Movement, recently acquired John Heilemann’s Recount out of distress in a low-dollar acquisition.)

That said, Lewis also has other things going on. He is currently leading an investment group vying to acquire The Telegraph, where he once served as editor-in-chief. (He is competing with the likes of Murdoch and Mathias Döpfner, among others. Godspeed.) And he also serves on the board of the Associated Press, a position he’d almost certainly have to relinquish if he joins the Post.

Is Lewis Bezos’s man? Will he be able to extricate himself from the Telegraph deal (almost certainly killing that bid), his start-up, and the AP board? As Don Draper once noted, that’s what the money is for. Presumably, after such a long and public search, Bezos is reluctant to re-open the aperture of the search, revisiting candidates from the previous round of finalists or starting anew. That would be a humbling setback for him and the paper (and Sucherman, no doubt). Then again, as Bezos knows better than anyone, there’s no sense rushing these things.

This is an intriguing idea, especially in an industry in great need of innovation. But, alas, it may not be as novel as it seems. Many hedge funds have analysts and research divisions that report on market moving news, and there are plenty of investment research firms (Hindenburg, etcetera) that publish investigative reporting. Professional investment managers are also probably biased towards heeding the advice of pedigreed investment professionals rather than journalists, who have little to zero experience putting other peoples’ money to work. And while Hunterbrook’s journalist-analysts have worked at places like the Journal, the BBC and Barron’s, per the FT report, they’re going to be judged for the first time by a whole new set of criteria—the tangible R.O.I. that their journalism creates. And as Bloomberg Media has made abundantly clear, it can take an army of a newsroom to move the markets.

Nevertheless, the smart money crowd is behind the effort. Several blue-chip investors are already involved: Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective; Outside the Box Investments, the VC firm launched earlier this year by Katherine Tarbox and other media veterans (including Matt Murray, the former Journal editor-in-chief, who will act as an adviser); General Catalyst founder David Fialkow, Avenue Capital’s Marc Lasry, and former JPMorgan chief investment officer Matt Cherwin.

On some level, the thesis here represents a subtle shift that’s been taking place for years in the U.S. media market. After BuzzFeed and Vox and BDG launched as general interest consumer-based plays, a new generation of digital media companies have focused more intently on B2B, professionalized audiences: Politico, Axios, The Information, Punchbowl, and, yes, Puck have attended to the cravings of always-on professionals who demonstrate high engagement and a propensity to pay. Whether these professionals put their dry powder to work based on Hunterbrook’s news and analysis, however, is the great unknown.

Lynch also announced that Condé would essentially abandon the in-house video studio that was intended to transform its journalism into YouTube hits, films and television series—a move he presaged last month with the defenestration of entertainment chief Agnes Chu. In his note to staff, Lynch noted that consumers were increasingly turning away from long-form video and toward services like TikTok and YouTube Shorts, necessitating a pivot back to more traditional revenue streams, like subscriptions and e-commerce.

The decade-plus deflation of Condé Nast is one of those media stories that is confounding because it was both so pre-ordained and, of course, totally and completely avoidable. A generation ago, when Si Newhouse ruled the roost according to his own whims, even overperforming editors and publishers were demoted or moved out when they didn’t meet his expectations. In those days, nothing was too big for Condé Nast. When Edward Menicheschi was being vetted to take over as the publisher of Vanity Fair, he was flown on a private jet for a clandestine meeting in Martha’s Vineyard with Graydon Carter, who was at the time vacationing with the likes of Larry David and Tom Hanks. (Menicheschi showed up in a white suit and nailed the job.)

Of course print was going away, but it’s not as if downsizing was the only option. And yet, as Si grew older and the next generation of Newhouses felt less affinity for the business, talent bled out of the building and creativity, once the cornerstone of the operation, seemed to slowly evaporate. During Chuck Townsend’s era as C.E.O., the company could be accused of pretending that the Internet was a passing fad as digital teams were created and kept separate from editorial operations. During the subsequent Bob Sauerberg era, unwise capital investments were made in critical areas, such as developing an ill-fated CMS and investing in CNE—one of those perfect-on-paper ideas that cost more than it should have, set off innumerable turf wars, and yielded mediocre financial results despite best efforts. The turf wars were significant, and predictable enough, that Condé Nast initially headquartered CNE in a separate building even though the company essentially had all of One World Trade to itself. (The Newhouses, to their credit, were brilliant at hunting real estate deals.)

Anyway, after those balloons popped, the answer to everything seemed to be to cut, cut, cut. Legends like Cindi Leive were replaced by Sam Barry. Glamour’ Women of the Year went from Carnegie Hall to Spring Studios, overlooking the exit ramps of the Holland Tunnel. Lynch’s appointment was the apotheosis of it all: his mandate, it seemed, was to combine both the U.S. and international entity in one single company, a redundancy-offing bonanza. Most companies would be thrilled to simultaneously employ Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful, and yet Condé Nast no longer seemed big enough for the both of them.

Of course, Lynch was likely given little choice here. Presumably, like many other large ad-supported media companies, Condé Nast has had a rough year. But the continued direction of the company remains a cautionary tale of what can happen, even in the most creative business, when the beancounters finally take over.