Amazon founder buys the Washington Post
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who helped bring books into the digital age, is going after another pillar of “old media” – the Washington Post.
Mr Bezos, 49, struck a deal announced yesterday to buy the venerable Washington broadsheet and other newspapers for $250m (€188m).
It was a startling demonstration of how the internet has created winners and losers and transformed the media landscape.
Mr Bezos pioneered online shopping, first by selling books out of his Seattle garage in 1995, then just about everything else. In doing so, he has amassed a US $25bn (€18.8bn) personal fortune, based on the most recent estimates by Forbes magazine.
Meanwhile the Washington Post, like most newspapers, has been losing readers and advertisers to the internet while watching its value plummet.
The newspaper became internationally known after its investigation of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the basis for the Robert Redford film All The President’s Men.
Mr Bezos is buying the newspaper as an individual, and Amazon is not involved.
He told Post employees in a letter that he would keep his “day job” as Amazon CEO and a life in “the other Washington” where Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle are based.
But he made clear there would be changes coming.
“The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs,” he wrote.
“There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”
Mr Bezos said that he understands the Post’s “critical role” in Washington and its values will not change.
“The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners,” he said in his letter to Post employees.
“We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.”
Katharine Weymouth, the newspaper’s publisher and a member of the Graham family that has owned the newspaper since 1933, will remain in her job. She has asked other senior managers to stay on as well.
“Mr Bezos knows as well as anyone the opportunities that come with revolutionary technology when we understand how to make the most of it,” she said in a letter to readers.
The news surprised industry observers and even the newspaper’s employees.
“I think we’re all still in shock,” said Robert McCartney, one of the newspaper’s columnists and a 31-year veteran. “Everybody’s standing around the newsroom talking about it. ... I don’t think much work’s getting done.”
Readership of the print editions has plummeted during the past decade. In 2002, The Washington Post’s paid weekday circulation averaged nearly 768,000 copies. By last year, that had fallen to an average of just under 481,000, a 37% drop.
