It has come to light that the weeks preceding Sally Buzbee’s resignation from the Washington Post were quite tense as she and chief executive Will Lewis couldn’t agree on whether or not the newspaper should cover a case linking him to a phone hacking lawsuit in the UK instituted by Prince Harry.

Ms Buzbee quit The Post last weekend over a perceived demotion that would narrow her duty as overall chief editor who oversees the core politics, other beats and opinion desks to a newly created social media section where she is expected to tend to the paper’s audience using multimedia and other story telling videos.

But it was more than that as The New York Times said the duo had in May clashed on whether The Post could report his ties to the phone hacking scandal given that a British judge was scheduled to rule to allow or bar plaintiffs from adding Mr Lewis to the suit.

When Ms Buzbee sought to obtain Mr Lewis’ approval to cover the case, he said it wasn’t newsworthy but the editor thought otherwise and said the paper would go ahead to publish the story.

“He (Mr Lewis) said her decision represented a lapse in judgment and abruptly ended the conversation,” The Times reported.

The judge on May 21 granted the plaintiff’s request to include Mr Lewis and other media executives as having a case to answer over alleged attempts to hide evidence that they hacked phones to obtain information about the royals. The Post published the report.

Although Mr Lewis did not resist the article’s publication, Ms Buzbee appeared unsure of her future at The Post, if there was any at all, The Times cited people familiar with the editor as saying.

The disagreement over the article’s publication seemed to add to Ms Buzbee’s concerns on the newsroom’s restructuring under Mr Lewis’s leadership eventually leading to her resignation.

Robert Winnett, an editor who had worked with Mr Lewis at The Daily Telegraph, would replace Ms Buzbee’s position at The Post.