Washington Post Sold To Jeff Bezos...

[KharmaTrain]

Another turning point for the very troubled print news industry:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/washington-post-to-be-sold-to-jeff-bezos/2013/08/05/ca537c9e-fe0c-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html

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 deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington’s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation’s politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, whose reporters have broken such stories as the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandals and disclosures about the National Security Administration’s surveillance program in May.

From my experience, those who venture from their area of expertise learn expensive lessons.

Discuss...

[Lint Head]

1. I smell death.

[DJ13]

2. Unsold newspapers make great packing materials

[Jenoch]

3. I will guess that 20 years ago the Washington Post

was worth more than three times what Bezos is paying. This truly is a sad state of affairs in the news and newspaper business.

[live love laugh]

4. Why change the name? That's a real deal killer. He doesn't know what he's doing and

nobody will know what he's selling.

[onenote]

5. Bezos is not changing the papers name

The company that no longer owns the paper is changing its name.

[Nye Bevan]

6. He's a very smart guy, and it will be fascinating to see what his approach is.

Nobody seems to have figured out how to be successful with old media (with the exception of The Economist). Let's see how Bezos does.