Washington Post To Replace Executive Editor By 2009: Report

There's soul-searching and campaigning going on, a lot of old hands are leaving, and people in Washington wonder who is going to be in charge next year.

Yes, they're looking at the White House, too, but this transition is about another fabled institution, The Washington Post.

The executive editor since 1991, Leonard Downie Jr., will almost certainly be gone by the time a new president is inaugurated next January. The new publisher, Katharine Weymouth, has been talking about -- and talking to -- potential successors to Mr. Downie, according to several people who have discussed the matter with her, Mr. Downie and other Post executives.

No one in a position to know would address the subject on the record, and those who did speak insisted on anonymity so as not to invoke the ire of their bosses and friends.

But in an interview on Friday, Mr. Downie, 66, all but acknowledged what has been conventional wisdom in his newsroom for months.

"The new publisher and I are working hard on restructuring this newsroom," he said, "and I would expect that any new publisher would eventually have a new editor, and we're working on that." But there is, he said, "no specific timing."

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