Jeff Bezos Buys the Washington Post 150
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.
Obligatory: (Score:5, Funny)
"I think it would be fun to run a newspaper"--Charles Foster Kane
Wash. Post will have Amazon-quality communication? (Score:3)
But maybe Jeff Bezos has a plan? No: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post for $250 Million [dailyfinance.com]. Quote: "I don't want to imply that I have a worked-out plan,
I joked with my wife about her criticism of me for buying something at a dollar store for $1 without a good plan of how I would use it.
Something about being a billionaire makes people crazy. I guess it's because they have no friend
Better than nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago when the Times bought the Boston Globe a friend and I mused that they could probably give every subscriber an e-reader that updates on a cellular network and/or WiFi and dispense with the dead tree stuff altogether. Of course, old people and some old-at-heart young people still love dead trees, so you sell your press operations with a long-term leaseback on the capacity. If you really execute well, you could even have had a repository for other published works on the same e-reader, and you could make a killing selling people content on their "free" tablet.
The thing that I find amazing is that Bezos is the one to launch a successful e-reader, and he did it the hard way! No subscription base to start from, no content to sell initially. Bezos had to convince people to buy the damn things at or above cost, not get them for free with a subscription they were already paying for. He had some huge disadvantages, but he wasn't stuck in the dark ages, and new he is buying the newspapers with his pocket change... just for his amusement. Adapt or die, indeed.
But, I agree, better than nothing. (Score:2)
That's not quite how it happened, if I remember correctly. When the first e-reader became available, there was a huge amount of press about the new technology.
Amazon negotiated with publishers. with whom the company already had contracts, for e-books. There are a lot of people who can't or won't carry heavy books. It was easy to see there was a market.
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"The thing that I find amazing is that Bezos is the one to launch a successful e-reader..."
That's not quite how it happened, if I remember correctly. When the first e-reader became available, there was a huge amount of press about the new technology.
Amazon negotiated with publishers. with whom the company already had contracts, for e-books. There are a lot of people who can't or won't carry heavy books. It was easy to see there was a market.
Yup. I had been reading books on portable devices since the days of the Newton. What Amazon did that made the market explode was implement a reader on an e-ink device with a form factor that was slim and lighweight, yet presented a page that approximated the size of a paperback book. And didn't have to be fed batteries every few hours.
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I wasn't claiming that what he did was rocket science, just that he made the first commercially successful one. Really, it should have been a publisher - who would have had a much easier time securing content. There were e-books - hell, the Kindle even uses an existing format - but nothing else that took off.
Does Jeff Bezos understand technology? (Score:2)
Jeff Bezos started a spaceflight company. That company has failed.
Elon Musk started a spaceflight company. That company has been amazingly successful.
Amazon has been rapidly buying new companies. That's why Amazon has not been making a profit. [theregister.co.uk]
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Whether he understands technology is kind of besides the point, isn't it? I'm also not sure how Amazon's profitability is germane. My point is that Amazon - not a major publisher - wound up selling ebooks through their device and their marketplace successfully, despite the rather large disadvantage of not actually owning any content. That the Times didn't even TRY to market an ebook with, at the very least, the Times content should be pretty embarrassing to them.
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In theory, I'd rather have an electronic version, but I want it to be as easy to browse through as a regular newspaper. Also, at least based on the reviews I've read of my local paper, the Kindle version at least isn't the entire paper. I want at _least_ the same content, if not a superset.
I can skim through a regular paper even easier than reading news articles online, opening new ones in tabs to read later.. But an approach SO
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Also, at least based on the reviews I've read of my local paper, the Kindle version at least isn't the entire paper.
Amazing, isn't it? The newspaper companies are literally stuck in a world of 20 years ago.
I like your interface idea. That would probably work well on something with a small screen.
Better than nothing, but not nearly enough. (Score:3)
In my opinion, that does not show sufficient insight into the real challenges.
Jeff Bezos had an idea of selling books on the internet. He hired some people to write the software. He was excellent at believing fully in the idea and doing whatever it took to make it a success. He got enormous benefits from being first. But, that is basically all.
Managing world communications is extremely different. It is necessary to manage the people. I
Re:Better than nothing, but not nearly enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
See what you think when you consider more detail. (Score:2)
You said, "Bezos lacks an understanding of how the world works?
We'll see (Score:2)
Re: Better than nothing, but not nearly enough. (Score:2)
At worst, he becomes this generation's Rupert Murdoch.
Amazon did not have profits last quarter. (Score:2)
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And there are far bigger challenges. A newspaper requires deep, detailed understanding of the world around us. Jeff Bezos does not have sufficient social sophistication.
So why is so-called "social sophistication" an asset rather than a liability?
He has never managed anything as complicated as a communication company producing stories throughout the world.
Amazon is the obvious counterexample.
Jeff Bezos had an idea of selling books on the internet. He hired some people to write the software. He was excellent at believing fully in the idea and doing whatever it took to make it a success. He got enormous benefits from being first. But, that is basically all.
And the Washington Post is just a business that writes entertaining stories. "That's all." You can belittle any business. But they are more complex than they appear to a superficial, outside observer.
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Re: Wash. Post will have Amazon-quality communicat (Score:2)
'buying some insanely fast sports car that he'd probably total in a month...'
Nobody buys them, they rent those. I mean everybody besides Nicolas Cage, he even buys a castle instead of renting a room.
Re: Wash. Post will have Amazon-quality communicat (Score:2)
I guess just deleting the cookies on exit will no longer be enough to read the paper for free when the Internet guys start running newspapers.
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You are twisting his words there. He is saying that the paper needs to change because the world is changing and news is moving online. He doesn't know exactly how to sort it out yet, but is at least going to try. The best anyone else has come up with is the paywall.
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In general, I agree with your wife. But maybe he has SO MUCH MONEY that he can "waste" $250 million just like you are "wasting" $1. According to Forbes, it's less than 1% of his net worth. http://www.forbes. [forbes.com]
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"Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And the king ain't satisfied till he rules everything" Bruce Springsteen.
Citizen Bezos (Score:2, Offtopic)
What's next? Will the mountain side he owns [wikipedia.org] in West Texas for the eternal clock being built by the Long Now Foundation also include a castle?
Haha, poor Taco (Score:5, Funny)
"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?"
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Amazon employees do not get free prime
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He was joking... Is your aspergers really that severe?
Shipping. (Score:5, Funny)
He paid more than $25 for the newspaper. I hope he got free shipping.
Re:Shipping. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Shipping. (Score:5, Funny)
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http://greekgeek.hubpages.com/hub/abject-lesson-vs-object-lesson [hubpages.com]
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And each edition will arrive 10 days later than he would have liked.
Downhill (Score:2)
Downhill now. Not that it was at great heights. But more safe to ignore.
good for journalism (Score:2, Insightful)
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 lik
Re:good for journalism (Score:5, Informative)
He's keeping the same Chief Editor, so its not clear to me how much it will change.
I expect him to make it free on Kindle. Seems like a long way to go to get content.
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He's keeping the same Chief Editor, so its not clear to me how much it will change.
I expect him to make it free on Kindle. Seems like a long way to go to get content.
I would expect both of those are wrong. You don't buy a company and hire the head of it ... at first. You almost always RIF them once you've got a replacement ready.
And Bezos bought it, not Amazon. Why would he give his content away?
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I would expect both of those are wrong. You don't buy a company and hire the head of it ... at first. You almost always RIF them once you've got a replacement ready.
And Bezos bought it, not Amazon. Why would he give his content away?
Fire, not hire. Damn autocomplete.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Perhaps he was trying to cut a deal for carrying the WaPo on Kindle, and they were asking such an outrageous price that he decided it was a better deal just to buy the damn paper out. It's not exactly out of the realm of possibility - all these old school newspaper guys have a massively inflated sense of self importance.
The reality is that what Radio didn't eat in the 40's and 50's, broadcast TV mostly ate in the 70s and 80s, with the scraps being vacuumed up by the Internet in the 90s. Now the Internet is
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He will keep the same editor as long as he writes what Bezos likes... Well, that is the way Murdoch does it.
Murdoch's strategy is to provide content that draws in the masses. Fox News is conservative because he thought he could make a profit on it that way. If you look at Murdoch's political beliefs, in general he seems more liberal (he believes in Climate Change, for example).
In short, Murdoch tells his people to write what makes money. Not what is right. And that's exactly what, for example, Bill O'Reilly does.
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Oh noes...a neocon bias. I mean just look, you've got all those other newspapers with a liberal bias including the NYT, and I hear nary a complaint. Then again, considering how hard and fast liberal papers are devaluing that's kind of moot isn't it? Take a look at the boston globe.
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The Washington Post, the NYT, and the rest of the major news sources bend over backwards to not piss off the PTB and jeopardize their access. The NYT was one of the first to 'embed' (more like 'in bed') reporters with military units in exchange for printing Pentagon news releases unedited as "news stories". They regularly print CIA disinformation in exchange for "exclusive" interviews with important politicians (a practice which is entirely illegal w
Matter of Perspective: (Score:2)
If you start out assuming that Mother Jones is the center of US political opinion, yes, the NYT might seem quite conservative.
But it's a little like when some of the right wing firebreathers complain about that pinko rag the Washington Times.
When you're at 30,000 feet, there's not much difference in appearance for something at ground level or at 500 feet.
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You're assuming that your own perspective is "the truth". I don't even assume that about myself. I've seen myself be disastrously wrong too many times.
However, if you have a direct line into some incontrovertible source of truth, that's great. I hope it serves you well.
Sadly, though, the fundies think they are tuned in to "the truth" as well. I don't think they are right.
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The subject should have a whole lot of question marks in it. The reason so many MSM companies are flailing/failing is that they all spew the same propaganda and people started to catch on to the game.
No matter what Bezos intentions are it won't fix the Government enforcement of media outlets as propaganda centers, prosecution of whistle blowers, abuse of journalists, and criminal methods of finding sources.
Re:good for journalism (Score:4, Informative)
Re:good for journalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
iTunes had a DRM-free deal with EMI, which was launched as iTunes+, before Amazon launched their MP3 store.
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Forced?
Apple was forced to include the DRM, contractually. Do you think they wanted the increased support costs and licensing costs of pursuing a technology that their customers hate, remembering that we're not talking about Sony here? Just as soon as their renegotiated contracts allowed, they dropped FairPlay (on music) like a wet sack of dog shit.
Now we just need the same to happen with video.
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It wasn't even Creative Labs.
Diamond Multimedia made the first commercially successful portable MP3 player (there was another company that imported one from Asia a month or two before Diamond started shipping their design), called the Rio PMP300 [wikipedia.org]. They were also the company that went to bat against the RIAA to keep the devices legal (and uphold format-shifting as fair use) through the RIAA v. Diamond [wikipedia.org] decision.
Now we can all be frustration-free.
Sad day (Score:2)
I remember (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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I choose not to be cynical (Score:5, Interesting)
They made more money than they knew what to do with, and quite a few of them have decided to take that wad and make a mark on the world with it.
I have no f'in idea if Elon will die on Mars, if Bill will eradicate Malaria, or if Jeff can generate unique editorial content to shape his country - but there's a little part of me that's just screaming 'yes'. He's not done it to make money, he's done it because he wants to - god knows, but I want to see what happens when journalists have a platform, the prestige and a backer with large piles of fuck-you-world money.
I just have a feeling that this is a bigger deal than Murdoch buying MySpace for twice the money.
I pity your extreme naivety (Score:2)
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yeah, go prison labor!
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Don't cry, wait a bit and there won't be very many Amazon warehouse workers to worry about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNuaPE4DTc [youtube.com]
I'm sure they can eventually have a robot that can replaces those pickers. Right now it might be just a bit expensive.
Amazon owns Kiva:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-19/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-in-second-biggest-takeover.html [bloomberg.com]
Read a newspaper for yesterday's news (Score:2)
Re:Read a newspaper for yesterday's news (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [latimes.com]. 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.
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Yes, I think I agree. While I have the same impulse as any other human to want to know what the hell is going on right now, I have come to realize that I'm probably getting dumber by watching "real-time coverage". Unless the event is happening near me, I probably don't need to know until they get it all sorted out. The Boston bombing coverage was just... awful. CNN kept reporting that they had suspects in custody and whatnot and then retracting it. Terrible.
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And it's not like the editors make submissions more accurate - sometimes it seems as if they add errors to get more useless posts.
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As a former print / online journalist who quit the business because he didn't want to take a second job at Denny's to pay the bills, I'll venture a guess that most of these "elite bloggers" would welcome the opportunity to work at an organization that can afford to pay them what they're worth and provide them the resources to do their jobs.
Whether Bezos will offer that remains to be seen. He certainly could afford to do so, if he chose.
On the other hand, Amazon isn't exactly a shining beacon of progressive
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Instant wrong is never better than delayed factual.
See: All major news networks miscalling which candidate won Florida in the 2000 Presidential Election. Twice.
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- Content
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You missed another reason, which is as an investment. Jeff may have some "revolutionary" idea for monetizing a newspaper online (that other print media companies have failed to work out) that he's willing to gamble a lot of money on, and the results could pay off big if he increases the value of the Washington Post in the process.
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He's stated that he doesn't have any preset plans for the Post. Of course, he might have an idea and just be hiding it; there's several plausible reason why he might do that.
Missing Option (Score:3)
I'm going with the political angle on this one...
I don't think so. I think the sales of the Boston Globe and the Washington Post this week show that old guard newspapers are now conspicuous consumption options for the super rich.
Re:I remember (Score:4)
Three more reasons for Jeff to buy any newspaper:
- Augment the Prime program with new premium content.
- New (free or free w/Prime) content for Kindle
- Show NYT and WSJ how to properly model a digital subscription program as they have clearly not yet figured out just how overpriced they are for a nearly zero-overhead distribution medium.
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I remember a few years ago someone did the numbers and realized that it would be cheaper for most newspapers to give every subscriber an eReader than to deliver them paper copies every day. Maybe now larger eInk screens are getting cheaper he plans to offer a new Kindle DX2 to subscribers or something.
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...when newspapers feared the rise of the internet. Now we have all the new money buying one outright. ...
Not the first time this has happened. Remember AOL/Time-Warner?
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AOL/Time-Warner?
That was a case of AOL cooking the books to pump up their apparent networth, and doing a "merger" with old media to cash-in and leave the suckers holding the bag.
You need a better example.
Editorials (Score:3, Funny)
Expect lots of pro-H1B editorials. No wait, they already have those.
Could be worse - at least it's not Murdoch.
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I do wonder though if Murdoch is trying to sell off his news papers.
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I do wonder though if Murdoch is trying to sell off his news papers.
He's been meeting with the owners of Charmin I think to talk about that very topic.
I really just wanted an excuse to make that joke. (Score:2)
What is it with all these newspapers changing hands lately? Has their lack of relevancy finally reached the point where they've simply been relegated to the status of being used as trading cards for rich people? Does Rupert Murdoch's kid ride around with a couple Brit tabloids clipped in his bicycle spokes? (Actually the noise would probably prove less obnoxious than the news.)
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Has their lack of relevancy finally reached the point where they've simply been relegated to the status of being used as trading cards for rich people?
Pretty much, yeah. That's the new model.
Actually, sports teams and low circulation specialty magazines went this route quite a while back. Why? Every business is in a delicate cash-flow dance. The internet caused the amount of income for newspapers to drop precipitously. As such, many have lost profitability, cut staff, and (sadly) gone out of business, ofte
Coming Soon! (Score:4, Interesting)
One-click micro-transaction articles. :P
$250M (Score:4, Funny)
Re: $250M (Score:2)
The Washington Post isn't available on Kindle, but it is available on the iPad. Or at least that is the case on the UK stores of both. I can get the New York Times and loads of other US papers on the UK Kindle Store.
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I expect that will change. Quickly.
Mere Coincidence (Score:2)
Bought dogs, bought news (Score:2)
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Is buying a newspaper like buying politicians?
It is, if the newspaper is in a town where politicians are at. Washington seems to fit the bill. Make no mistake, Bezos has bought himself a bully pulpit, even if the "internet uber alles" nerds here think it's useless - politicians still think newspapers are important, as do many people who vote for them.
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... politicians still think newspapers are important, as do many people who vote for them.
Politicians think themselves important and the newspapers back them up on it. What's important is the person who gets up every day doing a thankless job for people who don't give a damn, can't pay a decent salary ( except to themselves ), won't listen to meaningful suggestions from those that slog through the crap, oil, water, waste ( who may have some insights due to their position ) and then demand that you be away from your families on the weekend as well as the rest of the week, while these self-sanctif
Bezos might drag Washington Post into the 20th Cen (Score:3)
They'll fight being dragged out their New Guilded Age kicking and screaming the whole way.
Journalism independance? (Score:2)
Content for the Kindle (Score:3)
All with Amazon branding to boot for a mere $250 mil. With the Boston Globe just getting sold for $70M [huffingtonpost.com]it seems as though Newspapers are cheap enough.
Now Bezos can pump the WP articles onto Kindles royalty free. It's a bit of a shame though, I do like the WP and had a subscription when I lived in DC.
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When a major corporation buys a news outlet, you can bet that cheap articles isn't the reason.
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Well he bought it, not Amazon and media moguls are not a new thing. So, yes now Bezos has a bully pulpit for his own editorial monologue and maybe it won't be as biased as any other paper out there or maybe it will.
How come reading this my first thought was (Score:2)
Jeff Bezos bought a toilette paper company.
I bought ice-cream yesterday (Score:2)
I bought ice-cream yesterday although I did not need it (lactose)
Bezos may want the delivery system (Score:2)
We know that Amazon has been looking for a way to have urban same day delivery for some purchases. Who has a somewhat efficient same day delivery system already in place? Newspapers do, and their equipment and certain systems may be adaptable to a system for delivering parcels at other times, or perhaps even in conjunction with dropping off the bales of papers and putting parcels in a secure facility at the same time.
The same-day delivery system could be the savior of daily newspaper deliveries, and it cou
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"the only reason that we ever found out about Nixon abusing the FBI to persecute his political opponents was because the Washington Post owners were willing to challenge the government."
Too bad they only do this when a republican is in the white house.