Claiming credit for the NSA story seems disingenuous at best, especially given their antagonism towards Snowden:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/how-washingt...
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130702/11474423694/washin...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/10/washing...
EDIT: While acknowledging the WaPo's significant contributions in the early 70s, it seems like they lost their way somewhere along the line:
Washington Post Kills Account of Its Failures in Iraq Reporting and Runs a Defense Instead http://gawker.com/5992158/washington-post-kills-account-of-i...
Especially a paper like the Washington Post which has a ridiculous number of opinion writers on staff.
And by the way, at the time of writing 27 of the top 30 articles don't mention Snowden in the comments, so...
(Please do not get rid of any Snowden comments/posts on HN until the Police State is dismantled, hopefully by mid-next week.
Feel free to bury your head in the sand.
From reading this I can understand the antagonism towards Snowden. He deserves it.
Glenn Greenwald broke the story in the Guardian.
I mean, sorry for the cynicism, but this is an obvious conflict of interest. Retail, distribution, infrastructure, and now politics & media.
The man can do what he wants but the public probably shouldn't applaud this.
Doesn't mean we can't raise awareness of it each time it happens. That is, not applaud powerful people getting even more powerful.
There are also alternative forms of ownership, but that's a more complex subject not fit for a message board.
We happen to be a thoughtful community and a decent newsreader without (a lot of) hierarchy. If it migrates elsewhere, I will as well. I find many of Graham's old essays amusing in the abstract sense (they're Austrian Economics rehashed in the language of computer science), but question his intentions.
I suspect it's a power grab for influence in the long-term. Big media shapes the discourse, debate, and policy of the country. He can be a much more effective broker of business and societal matters now that he manages "the truth."
I think, at least :/
And sure, people can be intellectually lazy and only read sources that they agree with, but the fallacy of unbiased journalism is that a handful of media outlets will end up providing that anyway, just with the illusion of impartiality.
I kinda disagree with you on this one. Not only will something like the Kindle and Kindle apps benefit, but this is a huge win since the old style of media wasn't capable of figuring out how to stay in business. The reason why the Kindle, iTunes, Google Play or any other store is succeeding while the rest are failing is because all the rest didn't have monetized digital distribution mechanisms. All media was given out for free and now you can't stay in business if you decide to pay-wall your website. They weren't smart about it. However all other walled gardens are thriving because they are monetized from the get go and an effort has been made to make them simple to use.
The public is the winner here, and the Kindle. The only loser is probably B&N.
I submit that there was no possible set of actions the newspapers could have taken, including worldwide oligopolistic collusion, which could have produced a market in which any but a few "luxury" brands can charge media consumers directly. The basic service of telling us what happened over the last 12 hours is one that wants to be free.
My money's on Jeff - he's got something up his sleeve here.
I regard earning money in a productive fashion and without the use of force to be one of the greatest things a person can do. That's my belief, and I don't force anybody else to agree with me.
There are radically cheaper ways to have influence. He could set up a PAC, seed it with $50 million, and directly buy whatever influence he needs.
The thing about buying one of the few really national papers and slanting its coverage: your competitors will have a field day and it won't be long before your paper is a joke that nobody takes seriously.
I don't think he has much room to abuse this for influence.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/07/aol-huffington-post...
The Washington Post seems to have an incredible reputation (especially if they really did break the Pentagon Papers and others) and be a fun purchase if you have f-you money.
Is Jeff pursuing a content strategy? Washington Post for investigation and Business Insider for Biz news would be great.
Personally I'd rather have Jeff Bezos than Rupert Murdoch, but maybe that's just me...
Murdoch is easily one of the most evil people to have ever walked on this planet. He enabled the Iraq war which has seen a mass loss of life for no real gain. He supported the widespread hacking of UK citizens. His meddling in politics and elections in the UK, US and Australia is unprecedented, brazen and has unquestionably undermined democracy.
Even now he flew over an Editor from the NY Post to Australia to influence the election here who already is shocking the political scene here.
Yeah him and healthy majorities of both houses of Congress. Did Parliament not get the memo?
Was that undermining democracy?
Hmm! Didn't notice that, interesting.
Every morning while I eat my breakfast I download the Wall Street Journal and times to my iPad, and on the train to work scan them and this weeks Economist for interesting stories of the day, combined with this month's Scientific American, Smithsonian, and Science News.
If I could use Evernote with those "publications" on the iPad I could be very efficient in my collection of various inputs on news of the day. For now, I'm constrained to making notes to myself in my notebook.
To pull an interesting analogy here, Google sees everything through the lens of "You will be connected 100% of the time to the network." which is their future point that they are building systems around, sometimes today they seem ungainly or even useless when no network is available. Jeff (and Amazon) seems to see everything through the lens of "You will consume all of your media on a tablet like device." and building around the complete media experience there.
How much is it worth to have the WaPo as a mouthpiece?
As far as I'm concerned, AMZN already has plenty of brand recognition to talk about any technological innovation they might integrate with the WaPo brand. I look forward to AMZN playing its cards in the space and seeing if they can compete against a truly focused and unencumbered competitor.
Production is easy, discovery and profitability are the problems.
Best wishes, Bezos!
I agree, and that is what makes this so interesting. Lets say you had a 'kindle store' like thing but it was "News for You", and it had a search box kind of like a search engine box, but you could pull up your Kindle, any time something was happening, and type "Boston Bombing" into the search box, And poof you'd get all the stories about the Boston Bombing available to read after downloading them over the cellular network. Can you buy "inches of news" like you buy cellular minutes? With a roll over plan?
There are some tremendously disruptive businesses here.
So far the creation aspect is almost entirely dominated by ordinary citizens. With nearly everyone carrying internet-connected devices for photo, video and text input, there's simply no way a news organization, no matter how large or well funded, can keep up.
Where "News" is still lacking now has more to do with the latter two points. The best content is invariably on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, etc. but finding that needle in the haystack that is a news event is borderline impossible for the "ordinary citizen." Even the major news organizations are largely poring over the data that comes in and trying to find the best stuff. The third part - the fact checking- not many have time for anymore. The world moves so quickly that verifying accuracy is much less beneficial than seeking the next scoop. News orgs can move fast, make mistakes, and issue retractions later if they were wrong. Or they can just say "we're getting reports that..." (Translation: "We're watching Twitter and people are saying...")
I truly believe that creating a system that allows ordinary citizens to curate (vote on) and fact check the firehose of information flowing through social media networks is the bright, sustainable, profitable (!) future of journalism.
Full disclosure: I've been building and testing a product for a year that does precisely that, so I'm a little bit biased.
The Washington Post is an important institution for the USA, and comments like this make it seem that Bezos will be a good steward. I hope, and am fairly certain, that this is a good thing for everyone involved.
As far as I know, he has no experience in reporting the unbiased truth and a lot of experience in selling stuff.
Yea, I hope his boss doesn't put him on a reporting job.
>The deal does not include the company’s headquarters on 15th St. NW in Washington (the building has been for sale since February), or Foreign Policy magazine, Slate.com, the Root.com, the WaPo Labs digital-development operation or Post-owned land along the Potomac River in Alexandria.
(see showherst's comment for accuracy)
EDIT: Nope, just the newspapers. See the press release -
The transaction covers The Washington Post and other publishing businesses, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.
Slate magazine, TheRoot.com and Foreign Policy are not part of the transaction and will remain with The Washington Post Company, as will the WaPo Labs and SocialCode businesses, the Company’s interest in Classified Ventures and certain real estate assets, including the headquarters building in downtown Washington, DC. The Washington Post Company, which also owns Kaplan, Post–Newsweek Stations and Cable ONE, will be changing its name in connection with the transaction; no new name has yet been announced
Can't wait for it to become another CNBC infomercial.
Buffett, 81, has been expanding Berkshire’s media operations in the past year as he wagers that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. The billionaire’s firm bought the publisher of his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald Co., in December, and acquired 63 daily and weekly newspapers from Media General Inc. (MEG) for $142 million last month.
Local papers vs something larger like WaPo.
And note: While Buffett’s firm holds the largest stake in Washington Post Co. (WPO) and has shares of Gannett Co., he said Berkshire is less likely to make more stock market investments in the industry.
I have never really been drawn to the Kindle for books (except the large-but-expensive model) but it would be ideal for daily news - in fact the screen seems to pick up where newsprint left off. I'm old-fashioned enough to even like the idea of having everything in black & white.
He paid $11 million and is getting about $44 million after 40 years of holding it. That's kind of lousy rate of return, and the newspaper business has some question marks. So I can see why he might not be interested in buying it. And if Bezos is buying the paper for civic-minded reasons, I could see Buffet encouraging him.
I was surprised when Jack Welsh (x GE) wanted to buy the Boston Globe (he backed out). He realized the the shine was one of the past. It's interesting that Bezos sees value here but I think the value is in the same sense taking a small part of his billions and buying something that is a legend. (After all rich people buy art and other trinkets because they can so why not a newspaper?).
Although, to his credit, he and his wife did kick in $2.5mm to the Washington state marriage equality referendum last November: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/07/27/jeff-be...
Just watch as the rest of the baby boomer generation die off and hand over their assets.
The question would seem to be, whether Bezos intends to run a tight profitable ship, or if he is willing to forgo the profits for a larger staff. I'm hoping he has something creative in mind, a new business model that isn't free+ads or just a copy of what the NYT is doing.
WaPo is #8 by its daily circulation in the US, and #4 for its Sunday circulation.
Nobody is saying that Bezos will be a steward of good journalism (I can't see him doing much worse as the head of a major news medium than Rupert Murdoch, though) and has reasons to buy the paper that go beyond, ultimately, making more money.
But from a technology enthusiast standpoint, it can't be denied that the guy has a amazing track record of innovating the sectors he has been involved in, and personally I'm curious to see how he will tackle this one.
The main takeaway from the story, in my opinion, is seeing a steady trend of the "new" technology companies trying to get in a position of influence, like Facebook interested in getting into politics, Google having already plenty of lobbying/funding activities, and now Amazon getting its own paper...
Could be but I don't think that's the case. I think there is something else going on here either vanity or some underlying access or asset that provides much greater value to Bezos that has not much to do with Amazon either.
I mean if you have that much money you can afford to buy and have it lose money for years just for other valuable benefits and access. WP is a mouthpiece he could swing elections (influence is way beyond their circulation).
You can, but you can also believe in journalism and be willing to spend some of your money on keeping it alive.
Not sure we can really make an automatic judgement either way.
- Good. I hope it's a fresh issue?
- ...issue!?
Half of what I read is bull and the other half is shit.
[1]: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2013/01/jeff-bezos-on-leading-...
A 1000 times. At least it won't turn into the next PandoDaily(and its BeachMint fiasco).
And nothing will change.
* Much larger viewing area than an iPad
* It's more compact than an iPad
* It's cheaper than an iPad
* It's disposable
* It's recyclable
* You can use it in places digital media aren't allowed
(security buildings, airplane takeoff/landing, subway, etc)
* You don't have to know how to use it
* You don't need a data plan or need to use a computer
* You don't have to recharge it
"There is no map" -from a proven visionary worth $25.2B, leaves a whole lot of successful innovations and failures open.
> Weymouth said the decision to sell The Post sprang from annual budget discussions she had with Graham late last year. “We talked about whether [The Washington Post Co.] was the right place to house The Post,” she said. “If journalism is the mission, given the pressures to cut costs and make profits, maybe [a publicly traded company] is not the best place for The Post.”
Does this mean that the future of much of journalism is in the non-profit sector (think NPR)?
If that's actually new, Bezos sure didn't waste any time monetizing things.