Jaws across Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Silicon Valley just dropped in unison: Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Amazon.com and one of the pioneering figures of the commercial Internet, just acquired the storied Washington Post for $250 million.
The deal is surprising for a number of reasons. Bezos believes that the Internet is changing the entire business landscape, but so far he has seemed devoted to blazing new paths, not rescuing ailing old media franchises. In a letter posted to WashingtonPost.com, Bezos suggested that he could bring some Amazon-style innovation, which favors rapid experimentation, to the ailing 136-year old newspaper company. “The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs,” Bezos wrote. “There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about—government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports—and working backwards from there.”
