Jeff Bezos Buys the Washington Post

schwit1 writes with word that Jeff Bezos decided to buy a news paper. Quoting the Washington Post: "The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family's stewardship of one of America's leading news organizations after four generations. Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world's richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to the Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses. Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter." The WaPo Labs team (including CmdrTaco) were not part of the deal, but from the sound of it they will remain part of The Post Co. and haven't been axed.

Comments

good for journalism

[globaljustin]

The Post has been lagging for years and is often accused of a neo-con bias.

Once it was on par with the New York Times as a 'national newspaper of record' but since the 2000s it has been more like the Wall Street Journal.

I think this sale will be good for journalism because Bezos will bring fresh hype and generate discussion of media ownership and what defines a 'profitable' newspaper. Bezos has shown to have the capacity to see past the horizons that usually limit tech companies...even 'innovative' ones like Apple.

For me Amazon always works. Their mp3's have always had non-DRM options. Amazon EC2 is expensive for what you get but it's legit.

Re:good for journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it seem everyone forgets what was legally available before Apple started iTunes? Apple's biggest contribution wasn't that they have music available. It was that they finally convinced/forced the major music conglomerates to license the music for a sensible price, with sensible DRM, on a per song basis.

Before that you had the pirate mp3 sites and file-sharing programs at one end of the spectrum, and overpriced offerings with horrendous DRM from the publishing houses at the other end. That included physical CDs with rootkits.

The other aspect of iTunes I don't see anymore is that a large fraction of the sale price of a song goes directly to the artist. Before this, they were lucky to get pennies per song, with no way to verify numbers sold.

I don't even use iTunes, or digital music hardly at all. I've only recently added some of my CDs to my smartphone, and that only because my car stereo is broken. But I can remember all the praise for Apple when they broke the music industry's death grip on digital distribution.

Posting AC because I have probably offended someone here, and don't need the grief that brings.

Re:good for journalism

[datavirtue]

Simple. Bezos answers to Bezos and Amazon answers to stock holders. Now Bezos can easily afford the post, float the content to Amazon (which enriches him as well, since he owns part of it) and the stockholders and pundits have nothing but good things to say about the whole thing. I would have done the same thing. Had he purchased it with Amazon money a whole freaking slurry of controversy and weeks of discussions would have ensued among various stakeholders and finance media. Who wants that? This may be a result of the trend of the stock market acting short-term. It is much easier for Bezos to purchase it and "sell" the content to Amazon than it would be to field the angst over Amazon purchasing it and trying to monetize it.

I remember

[djupedal]

...when newspapers feared the rise of the internet. Now we have all the new money buying one outright. Is Jeff going to keep it going out of nostalgia or dig a hole and give it a quiet burial out of regard for the old guard? Or will it become his personal editorial platform...

Reasons to buy any newspaper:
- Foreign bureau access
- Subscriber base
- Political posture
- Brain trust
- Support a specific community
- Keep a tradition going
- Take control of an adversary or adversarial outlet

I'm going with the political angle on this one...

Re:Read a newspaper for yesterday's news

[R3d M3rcury]

If you want instant, as it happens [...]

Fortunately, "instant, as it happens" is frequently inaccurate and generally a waste of time.

I'm not in Venice, CA. No one I know is in Venice, CA. So I don't really need "instant, as it happens" information on things that happen in Venice, CA. I can certainly wait until the next day to find out what happened. I'd rather have accurate information the next day than misinformation now.

Better than nothing

[SuperKendall]

I'm not sad. I'm interested to see what form the experimentation will take.

Basically any kind of unplanned seat of the pants experimenting is superior to the existing newspaper plan of trying to have the ship grind down the iceburg until they can pass through.