Jeffrey Bezos, founder
of Amazon.com (AMZN) has acquired the Washington Post Company’s (WPO) newspaper
business for $250 million. The acquisition is through Bezos’ personal holdings,
estimated at $25 billion, not through Amazon.com.
The Washington Post
Company will change its name as a part of the transition in which it will maintain
control of several media properties including Foreign Policy magazine,
Slate.com, TheRoot.com, cable operator Cable One
and the Post-Newsweek network of television stations. It will also keep real
estate assets including the Post's headquarters in downtown Washington. It will also maintain control of education
company Kaplan, Inc.
The properties included
in the Bezos acquisition also include the Express newspaper,
The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and
Greater Washington Publishing.
Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham said the company's leadership
"decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry
challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better
for the Post.”
“Bezos' proven
technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency
make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post," Graham said in a
statement.
Bezos invested earlier this year in the
financial news site Business
Insider, and is also the founder of commercial space flight company Blue Origin. He has asked
Katharine Weymouth to stay on as publisher and CEO of the Post, and Martin Baron to remain as executive editor,
saying in a memo to employees that he will not be leading the newspaper
day-to-day.
Bezos said in the
statement that he understood "the critical role the Post plays in Washington, DC, and our nation,” and
that, "Our duty to readers will continue to be the heart of the Post.”
Bezos sent a memo to Post employees saying the paper "will need to
experiment" in coming years, and that he was "excited and optimistic
about the opportunity for invention."
"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," he wrote. "There
is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy."
Shares of The Washington
Post Company reacted favorably, up almost 5% in early trading Tuesday. The
shares are up 63% for the year.