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

Obligatory:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think it would be fun to run a newspaper"--Charles Foster Kane

Haha, poor Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

"Woohoo! I'm going to work at Amazon! Free Prime!"

"So, wait, what, it's not Amazon? Just the owner of Amazon? Okay! Still pretty great!"

"Ummm... guys... it says he's not buying us... we're just left to rot here on the carcass. Anyone known any good jobs sites?"

Shipping.

[harrkev]

He paid more than $25 for the newspaper. I hope he got free shipping.

Re:Shipping.

[Highland Deck Box]

I heard the purchase price was $247 million, but he bought $3 million worth of pens to qualify for super saver delivery.

Re:Shipping.

[symbolset]

More likely his teen son borrowed dad's iPad that was logged into Amazon.com and accidentally bought the whole newpaper while trying to look up what a "newspaper" was due to the whole one-click thing. I guess that sort of thing happens. After a stern talking to the teen will probably be sentenced to trying to turn a profit on the purchase as an object lesson to be careful touching around on dad's tablet.

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.

Re:Better than nothing, but not nearly enough.

[cusco]

Are you under the impression that he's buying the company without its staff? Yes, a newspaper needs reporters and editors and printers. Guess what? The Washington Post already has those things!

Have you looked at the state of modern "journalism" in the US? It's a travesty, worse than the official government newspapers of many countries, today's "journalists" are essentially stenographers for the PTB. In many cases what is printed is nothing more than a slightly re-worded version of the official press release. In some cases they don't even bother with a re-write, and yes, I'm referring to "articles" printed in the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and Chicago Tribune. (Still better than the "news stories" written, recorded, and distributed free of charge by industry and government organizations and broadcast on cable TV, but not much.)

Bezos lacks an understanding of how the world works? What planet are you living on? Here on Earth his company has operations in over 80 countries, is at the leading edge of the cloud computing revolution, has created several different markets for goods and services that never previously existed, has a logistics system that spans the planet, and generates more profit than the tax revenue of most countries.

You object that newspaper owners need to do things like get people interested in how the government works, reveal the reasons for the official spin on certain stories, and the like. Good points, but the CURRENT ownership isn't doing any of those things, and in fact has a history of cooperating with propaganda operations against US citizens dating back to the 1950s. Don't forget that Phil Graham freaking **RAN** the Project Mockingbird for the CIA.

All in all, I don't think that Bezos can do a worse job of running the Post than the Grahams currently are doing. At worst he might bankrupt it a few years earlier, at best he might make it into the sort of newspaper it always claimed to be.