"In a surprise move, Amazon founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has agreed to buy the Washington Post and other properties for $250 million.
The deal is being made by Bezos alone, without involvement from Seattle-based Amazon."
It’s a bit of a shock; the Graham family has been a local institution in DC for quite a long time. On the other hand, they’ve generally been bad at bringing the Post into the 21st century – development of the Post’s website nearly split the company, and they’ve been late and awkward in trying to develop a paywall. Also, they missed the opportunity to take the company public, which paid off big for the NYT. In their favor, though, they bought Kaplan, and the proprietary college has basically kept the newspaper afloat.
It will be interesting to see who stays and who goes, and whether Bezos has big plans for changing the paper.
I wonder if the fact that he is not buying Slate, the Root, and Foreign Policy suggests that those publications are not long for the world.
Hopefully not. I love my Slate Gabfests*, and enjoy reading their TV club discussions of my favorite shows when they’re in season. Plus, they’ve got good stories here and there generally, most of which land on my doorstep courtesy of facebook friends. Foreign Policy, while I’ve never read it myself, I know to be a respected institution.
- Well, Gabfest, at this point; I stopped listening to the sports one because there was no way to dodge the constant NBA/NCAA and NFL/NCAA talk, and I axed Culture because, not only is Stephen Metcalf an “enemy of joy,” to borrow a phrase from yet another Slate podcast, their topics were a Woody Allen movie and a reality show. Screw it: If this is culture, then I am a Philistine. Note that all of this could be avoided if people would put bookmarks in their podcasts. Anyway, I rant.
It could be a good thing for the Washington Post if he treats it as a public trust that he’s willing to support without expecting a huge return. Sort of how the Tampa Bay Times is operated by a non-profit group (the Poynter Institute).
The Washington Post company is huge, in addition to the publications mentioned, it also owns a health care company and a number of other interests that have nothing to do with publishing.
Yes, the company sold the money losing publishing part of the company (the newspaper and a few smaller publications) and kept the profitable parts.
never mind, PastTense got it.