Will Lewis, now the publisher of the Washington Post, was in full crisis mode in 2011. Then an executive at a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, he was an intermediary to the police detectives investigating a British phone-hacking scandal that had placed the company’s journalists and top leaders in legal peril. For years, reporters at News Corporation’s best-selling British tabloid had landed scoops by paying public officials and illegally listening to the voice mail messages of royals, politicians, celebrities and even a murdered girl. Mr. Lewis was supposed to cooperate with the police, identify wrongdoing and help steer the company through the crisis. His role, he would later say, was as a force for good.
