Amazon CEO buys the Washington Post for a cool $250m

In an unexpected move, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos has purchased for the Washington Post and associated publications for $250 million.  It is noted that Bezos will become the sole owner of the newspaper when the deal has been completed and that the newspaper will not be affiliated with Amazon itself.

The Washington Post is a large and influential newspaper in the United States and has previously broken a number of big stories including the Watergate scandal and the NSA's surveillance program.

Over the last decade, the Post “has been unable to escape the financial turmoil that has engulfed newspapers and other “legacy” media organisations”.

The Post's Chief Executive remarked in an interview that ‘The Post could have survived under the company's ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future. But we wanted to do more than survive”, hinting that Jeff Bezos will be looking to monetize the paper in different ways in the future, perhaps in conjunction with the Kindle division of Amazon.

However, it doesn't appear that Bezos will be making any big changes soon, saying that “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”.

KitGuru says: We imagine the future for the Post will be more evolutionary than revolutionary, but either way we look forward to seeing what the future holds in the hands of Bezos.

Source: Washington Post; Image: Good Ereader

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