[3] From September 2010[4] to July 2011, Lewis worked as general manager of the newspaper publisher News International, playing a role in the company's response to the phone hacking crisis.
[5] During his tenure, he clashed with executive editor Sally Buzbee over his attempt to reorganize the newsroom structure and to kill coverage of his role in the phone hacking crisis.
[18] Lewis's involvement in the scandal began when he was told by colleagues that they had been approached by an intermediary on behalf of a source who said that they had four years' worth of MPs' data copied onto a disk.
After establishing that the paper would not be breaking the law by accepting the disc, and that the story was in the public interest, Lewis approved negotiation with the intermediary.
[19] In 2012, Lewis told the Leveson Inquiry: "the reason [the source] had come to the Telegraph was he wanted to ensure fair and balanced coverage.
"[22] The publication of the story led to the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, a further six government ministers and the creation of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
[25] In the interview Lewis responded to claims by that his newspaper's coverage had irreparably damaged parliament and democracy as "Absolute, complete rubbish."
In the interview Lewis claimed: "It is going to open up parliament to a whole new generation of people who understand what it means to be a representative of British citizens," he said.
[27] Lewis talked about establishment hostility towards the Telegraph newsroom and mentioned a brief meeting with HM Queen wherein she indicated her support and sympathy for the story.
In a 2019 New Statesman article[28] Lewis wrote that the scandal was a missed opportunity: "The chance to make radical reforms to our political institutions and how they operate was, however, glaringly (and deliberately) overlooked….
Perhaps the fallout from Brexit will trigger the root-and-branch reform we need before these challenges can ever hope to be met with the sort of honesty, energy and imagination they demand.
[39][40] Almost immediately on joining, an article in The New York Times caused the ongoing issue of illegal phone message interception by the News of the World to flare up.
[41] Towards the end of 2010, Lewis was informed that the company was facing a large number of civil actions relating to phone hacking.
The MSC was chaired by Lord Grabiner QC, a senior commercial lawyer, taking legal advice from the law firm Linklaters.
"[53] Though no Sun journalists were successfully convicted by Operation Elveden, News of the World feature writer Dan Evans received a 10-month suspended sentence.
Operation Weeting successfully convicted News of the World journalists Neville Thurlbeck and Greg Miskiw who were both sentenced to six months in prison.
Despite the fact that the subject of the transcript was clearly in the public interest, Telegraph management hired the detective agency Kroll to find the source of the leak.
[58][59] In July 2011, Reuters reported that the corporate investigations firm Kroll had "strong reasons" to suspect that Lewis had been involved in the leak to Peston.
[60] Kroll advised The Telegraph that because of the number of people who had access to databanks (which included employees for telecoms giant BT) a continued investigation would be unlikely to produce a conclusive result.
Kroll's own admission the evidence they had gathered was circumstantial and pointed to 15 separate people at The Telegraph had access to the Cable audio file.
[58] Lewis responded to The New York Times: "This is a clear attempt to undermine the strong working relationship between News Corp.'s Management and Standards Committee and the Metropolitan Police Service.
[63] Lewis had responsibility for the publication of the Wall Street Journal, America's largest newspaper by paid circulation; Factiva, the business information and research tool; Barron's, the weekly magazine and Dow Jones Financial News and Newswires.
During his tenure, the WSJ won a Pulitzer Prize[66] for uncovering President Trump's relationship with Michael Cohen and payoffs to the adult movie actress, Stormy Daniels.
[68] Lewis has regularly made the case for professional media and has criticised technology companies for contributing to the rise of fake news.
In a panel at the Cannes Lions in 2015 he said that: "the issue for us, and I think the broader industry, is do we run headless chicken-like towards offers from companies like Apple and Facebook to put our content in their walled gardens?.
As part of a 2016 review into its hiring and compensation practices, Dow Jones retained an outside consultancy, Willis Towers Watson.
"[80] Lewis was quoted in the press coverage as saying that his departure from the company was amicable and that he was looking forward to spending more time with his family in London.
[5] In April 2024, he announced a plan to reorganize the newsroom, splitting off a new division focused on reporting for social media and service journalism.
He offered executive editor Sally Buzbee a role leading the new division, which she viewed as a demotion, helping prompt her resignation in June 2024.
[6] He also clashed with Buzbee over the Post's publication of an article that reported on a judge's decision to let him be named as potentially involved in the News International phone hacking scandal.