I guess that most normal people, upon learning that Jeff Bezos has bought the Washington Post, will just shrug and move on. For folks in the universe that I inhabit, in contrast, it’s a really intriguing development. This is the first time that someone who really understands the digital world has acquired a leading newspaper. So this story is not just about the future of a single US paper. It may have useful lessons for the entire industry. The shrewdest comments on the development that I’ve seen so far come from the Reuters columnist, Jack Shafer. Here’s an extract:
In acquiring the Washington Post, Bezos enters a business that is not radically different from the ones he already owns. Reporters and editors like to think their literary arts are central to newspapering. But it’s better to think of a newspaper as a coordination problem that manufacturing and distribution solves daily: Copy, art, and advertising is beamed from newsroom to printing plant, bundled newspapers flow from the plant to trucks, are transferred to carriers, and are delivered to your front door. Nobody knows more about deadline deliveries and distribution than Bezos’s Amazon, which has spoiled several nations with its reliable service. I can’t imagine what plans Bezos has for the print edition of the paper—if I did, I’d be worth $25.2 billion—but I’m confident that he will maximize the value of the existing Post delivery system in novel ways. It would not surprise me to see him use the Post network of trucks and carriers to enter the local delivery business as a pilot project. Obviously, he’s learned a lot from same-day delivery he could share with the paper.
Although most of us think of Amazon as a retailer, the computer sector has long regarded it as a tech company, competing with IBM, Microsoft, Google, and others as a seller of “cloud” computing power through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary. It’s also a computer devices company, via its Kindle readers. The sort of computer resources and ingenuity Bezos can bring to the Post—or more properly the washingtonpost.com—rival that of almost every other regional purveyor of news, entertainment, communications, and advertising. Any competing web property, cable systems, mobile phone system, or broadcasting operation in the Washington area should be on notice: Bezos means to use this foothold to go after the most lucrative parts of your businesses in the one of the richest corners of the country. He’ll spend you to death.
Source:
http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2013/08/06/18949