Welcome back to In The Room.

Tonight, a look back at Fred Ryan’s legacy as he exits the Post Co., a tale of two countervailing acts—with some thoughts from Ryan, himself.

Ryan’s legacy at the Post Co. is, in many ways, a tale told in two countervailing acts. The first began in 2013, shortly after Jeff Bezos bought the paper for a criminally inexpensive price of $250 million and appointed Ryan, the former Reagan aide-turned-Politico executive, as his inaugural publisher and C.E.O. Working with Marty Baron, the legendary executive editor, Ryan deployed Bezos’s vast resources to dramatically overhaul the company’s digital operation and then rode the wave of liberal panic over Trump’s political ascent and presidency, growing the paper’s paid subscriber count from 35,000 to 3 million in the process.

In those halcyon days, the Post became a pillar of the anti-Trump resistance: reporters like Josh Dawsey and David Fahrenthold became minor national celebrities, the company paid for a ham-fisted Super Bowl ad featuring a Tom Hanks voice over. Meanwhile, Bezos triumphantly declared that the Post could supplant The New York Times as “the new paper of record.”

The second act, of course, will be remembered less favorably. In early 2021, in the span of a week, Trump left office and Baron stepped down. Subscribers churned, revenue declined, and it soon became abundantly clear to Post staff that Ryan had never figured out a strategy for growth in the post-“Democracy Dies in the Darkness” era. While Meredith Kopit-Levien had been aggressively diversifying the Times’s business and building out subscriber-focused lifestyle products, Ryan had dragged his feet on several potential acquisitions, missed the opportune window to offload the company’s SaaS service, and made a few arguably misguided investments in international expansion.

Increasingly disillusioned by Ryan’s indecision and lack of vision, leaders from across the company’s product, tech, and marketing orgs decamped for sunnier pastures while several star journalists took jobs elsewhere. In the process, Ryan famously bungled a relatively minor layoff announcement, driving the vast majority of the newsroom to join an already embittered union effort. A malaise set in… and it never lifted.

But Ryan’s critics, who have long portrayed him as a gentleman C.E.O., and more of a Chamber of Commerce type than a real visionary, tend to suggest that just as Politico’s success is truly owed to Jim VandeHei, the Post’s historic run resulted from the alchemy of Bezos, Baron, and Trump. Their thesis rests on the following data points: Since 2021, the Post’s subscriber base has declined to 2.5 million, and the company lost money in 2022 and is on track to lose money again in 2023, I’m told. (Ryan declined to discuss financial performance.)

In any event, the overwhelming majority of current and former Post staffers I talk to, as well as other industry executives, place blame for the company’s troubles on Ryan. “He made all the wrong decisions and read all the wrong signals,” one veteran media executive told me. “They thought the bump in subs was because of the Post, when in fact all of it was therapy for liberals who were funding the resistance.”

Bezos also encouraged his interlocutors to speak candidly, and many expressed frustration with Ryan’s lack of vision, an endless stream of memos and meetings that seemed to go nowhere, and even the way he seemed to look down on Post journalists. Privately, Ryan was infuriated by how many reporters worked remotely even after Covid restrictions had eased, and he suspected that many were playing hooky. For a time, he monitored badge swipes while pushing for mandated office attendance. One former Post journalist summarized the internal sentiments toward Ryan thusly: “There was never a plan other than to break news, and it didn’t help that he hated everyone in the newsroom.”

Ryan finally announced this week that he would be stepping down in August to run the Center on Public Civility, a Reagan Foundation initiative that will be backed by Bezos himself. Some Posties have long suspected that Bezos has been planning to depose Ryan since that January visit, but wanted to afford him an opportunity to find a graceful exit. (Ryan declined to say when he and Bezos determined he would leave.) In any event, Ryan’s exit has been a masterclass in executive departure.

Meanwhile, Bezos has enlisted Patty Stonesifer, a longtime friend and confidant, three-decade Amazon board member, and one-time Microsoft executive and Gates Foundation C.E.O., to serve as the Post Co.’s interim chief executive—a move that was immediately celebrated by many in the newsroom. “Patty is brilliant,” Sally Quinn, the famed Post journalist, told me. “I know they say she’s an interim person, but I wish they would make it formal because I can’t think of anybody better than Patty. … This is a major turning point for the paper.”

On Monday night, the Post threw a party for the release of Ben Terris’s new book that effectively functioned as a celebration for the long overdue leadership transition, sources said. “People were elated,” said one attendee; another described it as “total jubilation.” To his credit, Ryan also attended and gave a toast to Terris. “That was actually pretty classy,” one Post source said. “It wasn’t easy to show up at that.”

Both of her top deputy editors have left in recent months: Steven Ginsberg to The Athletic, Cameron Barr to his memoirs. (The Times reported that Ryan had accused Barr of leaking unflattering information to the press, and even sought his ouster. Ryan told me that was “utter nonsense,” and added, “if I wasn’t leaving to go run an institute on civility, I would use stronger terms.”) Even Buzbee has floated the idea of leaving, inviting staffers in December to tell her if they wanted her to leave. “It won’t hurt my feelings,” Semafor reported her saying.

Of course, the most important question about the Post’s future is for Bezos, himself. For all that people endlessly compare the Times to the Post, they are only similar on a superficial level. Underneath the hood, The New York Times Company is a publicly traded, dual-class entity that is subject to Wall Street analyst scrutiny and investor relations, and whose dividend fuels generations of the Sulzberger family. The Post, on the other hand, is Bezos’ own private media island: he can grow it, shrink it to profitability, set it forward on an ambitious growth path, or anything in between. All that Ryan’s departure really suggests is that he isn’t going to simply let it stay put.