Washington Post Acquired By Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

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

1. 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.
    
2. 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.
    
3. 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. 
    
4. 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.

Be Epic

Traditionally, an “epic” was a long poem that narrated the deeds of heroes, the rise and fall of nations and the meddling of the gods. But in today’s vocabulary, “epic” is an — often intentionally exaggerated — adjective used to say that something is awesome.

When describing a person, you might say, “That guy was the most epic guitarist I’ve ever seen.” For an event or action, a simple “That was epic.”

You get the idea. But how does “epic” work for organizations? It definitely sounds weird when you talk about them like that:

Adobe is the most epic content authoring, customer experience management and online marketing software developer ever!

Yep, that definitely sounds weird — and a wee bit forced.

Making “epic” work for an organization isn’t easy. In the traditional epic, characters, groups and even entire nations went through a lot of hardship, self-discovery, lesson learning and perhaps even sacrifice to get to where they were going. Sound familiar? That’s probably because you experienced those same things at some point in your organization’s history. Any company that’s still operating in this world knows how hard it can be — and what it had to go through to get to where it is today.

That journey — coupled with your history and culture — makes up your unique story. It’s the tale of how you came to be and the adventures you’ve been on since the beginning. It’s the saga of your relationships with customers and the chronicle of your battles with competitors.

Unfortunately, most organizations aren’t on the same page when it comes to understanding and telling their unique story. Our role is to discover it, dust it off, polish it, package it and tell it in its most favorable light and most memorable way to those who will benefit from hearing it.

And with our team by your side every step of the way, you’ll discover how to make that story epic.