Medias merge.
Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of internet-commerce giant Amazon.com, has entered into a purchase agreement with the Washington Post Company to take control of their 136-year-old flagship newspaper, The Washington Post. The paper, famous for its Watergate-era truth-to-power journalism, went for a reported $250 million, or a little less than 1% of Bezos’s net worth.Although the Post has long been considered one of the nation’s premier dailies, on a rarefied par with the New York Times, it’s not immune from the modern perils plaguing all traditional newspapers.
Declining ad revenue and a shrinking readership base is the new — or maybe not so new — norm for these institutions. Even the Post, which boasts a vibrant digital presence, has suffered earnings shortfalls in each of the last six years. Although the Graham family, which has owned the paper for four generations, gave no previous hint that the Post was for sale, no one should really be surprised by this turn of events. Newspaper sales are also the new normal, because for many of them, their only hope of survival is new management.
At first glance, it might seem that the big story here is the marriage of a venerable media company, with one of its upstart online heirs. And maybe there’s something to that — ad revenue, after all, isn’t just the Post’s bread and butter, it’s also the mainstay of many a Dot Com. That’s not true for Amazon, though, which is a straightforward product retailer (once operated, by the way, from Jeff Bezos’s Seattle garage). No, it seems that the only real connection between the Post and Amazon is their mutual purveyance of the printed word.
It’s important to remember, though, that the NASDAQ-traded corporation Amazon.com didn’t buy the Post. Jeff Bezos did. When the sale is finalized, probably in October, he’ll be the paper’s sole proprietor.
And that, we think, is the story. “Billionaire buys paper” — it’s not a new story. Just a few days before Bezos made his move, John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, bought the Boston Globe. In both cases, the newly minted publishers publicly affirmed their commitment to ongoing journalistic integrity, and to a “hands-off” editorial policy.
Newspapers are in trouble. They’re vital to communities, but as profit centers they’re sorely lacking. It just may be that the stewardship of benevolent billionaires, who let journalists be journalists and for whom ad revenue isn’t so important, could be exactly what saves them.
The C4
- Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994. Legend has it he wrote the business plan as he was driving from New York to his new home in Seattle. A little unsafe, yet still inspiring.
- He turned that little online bookselling concern into one of the most valuable, recognizable, and enduring online brands. Jeff Bezos helps define twenty-first-century entrepreneurship.
- So maybe we shouldn’t have been as shocked as we were when the Graham family announced on August 5 that they were selling the Washington Post to Mr. Bezos.
- What comes next is entirely up to him. He might dismantle the newsroom and sell the fixtures. He might turn it into an editorial cheer-section for all things Amazon. Or he could reach into those deep pockets and create a journalistic legacy, independent of meddling and financial worries, that will go on serving the readers of the Washington Post. We think we know which way he’s leaning. We sincerely hope we’re right.
