Photo by Dan Macy
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive officer of online retail giant Amazon, will buy The Washington Post for $250 million, the newspaper revealed in a surprise announcement today. When complete, the sale will mark the end of the Graham family’s 65-year ownership of one of the United States’ premier newspapers.
Publisher Katharine Weymouth informed the Post’s staff at 4:30 p.m., just as the the newspaper published a lengthy article detailing the sale, which was facilitated in secret by the investment firm Allen & Co. For Bezos, 49, the purchase will mark his first experience in daily publishing. Post media reporter Paul Farhi describes the sale as a “sudden and stunning turn of events.”
Bezos, who is based in Seattle, is making the purchase individually; Amazon Inc. will not have any financial stake in the Post’s future. Weymouth will be staying on as publisher, as will Stephen P. Hills as general manager, Martin Baron as executive editor, and Fred Hiatt as editor of the editorial page. Weymouth’s role as publisher, a Post document states, will be as an employee of the paper, not a scion.
“Everyone at the Post Company and everyone in our family has always been proud of The Washington Post — of the newspaper we publish and of the people who write and produce it,” Donald Graham, the chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, said in a news release. “Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”
The Post Company, which will change its name after the sale, is not out of publishing entirely. Slate, TheRoot.com, and Foreign Policy are not included in Bezos’ purchase. In addition to those properties, the Post Company is also holding on to its assets that have been making money, including its television stations, Kaplan, and, most recently, an industrial boiler division.
The Post Company, a publicly traded company, reported a 14 percent earnings loss in the second quarter of 2013 led by severe circulation drops at the namesake paper. Profits in the broadcast and cable divisions were up, as well as at Kaplan, which despite several leaner years with increased federal regulation of for-profit education, showed large gains after decreasing its operational costs.
In addition to the Post, Bezos is also getting the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing. But in a letter to the Post’s employees today, he says his new ownership will be a largely hands-off affair.
“I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day,” he writes. “I am happily living in ‘the other Washington’ where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.”
Weymouth, who was the subject of a lenthy profile in The New York Times yesterday, took over as publisher in 2008. She is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham and the great-granddaughter of Eugene Meyer, who bought the paper in 1933. Baron, the executive editor, took over the newsroom in January following more than a decade at The Boston Globe.
And the Post is the second major American newspaper in as many weeks to change hands. The Globe, Baron’s old haunt, was sold last week by The New York Times Company to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry for $70 million, a more than 90 percent drop in value from the $1.1 billion the Times paid for the Globe in 1993.
Although the transaction was carried with complete secrecy, Bezos recently cashed in a chunk of his holdings in Amazon, the electronic commerce megalith he founded in 1994. Tech reporter Tim Carmody noted that Amazon’s second-quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission included Bezos selling $185 million in Amazon stock.
The sale also surprised as many Posties off-guard as it did readers and other media.
Well, this is unexpected
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) August 5, 2013
Reading about this in the Strand.
— Chris _ _ Richards (@Chris__Richards) August 5, 2013
Initial staff reaction: Ungghkh.
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) August 5, 2013
The Post Company’s stock price ended the day up 8.75 to 568.70, or 1.56 percent.
Katharine Weymouth’s letter to Post employees:
Katharine Weymouth Letter to Employees
Jeff Bezos’ letter to Post employees:
Don Graham’s statement to Post employees:
