The Washington Post, the Washington Post Co.’s flagship newspaper, has been sold today to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for a reported $250 million in cash. Along with his purchase of The Post, Bezos is entitled to affiliated publications all of which were under rule of the Graham family for nearly 80 years. Bezos’s company, popular online marketplace Amazon, will have no partake in the sale whatsoever.
As noted on its own website, the Washington Post sale will become official in approximately 60 days upon the completion of any and all final details.
As for the reasoning behind the sudden sale, of which many were unaware, the likely culprit is the internet. As noted,
“For much of the past decade, however, the paper has been unable to escape the financial turmoil that has engulfed newspapers and other ‘legacy’ media organizations. The rise of the Internet and the epochal change from print to digital technology have created a massive wave of competition for traditional news companies, scattering readers and advertisers across a radically altered news and information landscape and triggering mergers, bankruptcies and consolidation among the owners of print and broadcasting properties.”
To put The Posts’s struggles in perspective, over the past six years the storied newspaper has experienced a 44 percent decline in operating revenue. On top of that, print circulation has continued falling another 7 percent daily and Sundays during the first half of this year.
Of the imminent changes expected to take place for the publication, Bezos will leave the operating duties to the management, though looks to change some of the core values the paper instills in not only itself but in its readership.
Bezos told The Post, “There would be change with or without new ownership. But the key thing I hope people will take away from this is that the values of The Post do not need changing. The duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners.”
If anyone could improve revenue for a company, it’s Bezos who built his Amazon empire from a loaned $30,000 venture to an online sales hub that pulled in roughly $61 billion last year. On top of selling books, the company’s humble beginnings, Bezos and company have adapted the business to compete with former a auctioneer site eBay while also extending into electronics with its Kindle Fire tablet series, and finally streaming online entertainment.
Recently, our own Boston Globe was sold to Boston Red Sox principal owner John Henry for a scoff-worthy $70 million while ever popular blogging platform Tumblr was bought by Yahoo! for an eye-popping $1.1 billion.
