Jeff Bezos on Post purchase

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-purchase/2013/08/05/e5b293de-fe0d-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

by _pius • 13 years ago

224 61 13 years ago

washingtonpost.com

shawndumas• 13 years ago

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-pu...

bennyg• 13 years ago

I'm not sure if the intentions are true to form, but that's a very beautifully crafted letter.

vanderZwan• 13 years ago

And in the worst case we have new material for a Citizen Kane remake.

hhorsley• 13 years ago

I wonder what his "rosebud" is

subsystem• 13 years ago

Slick letter, by paragraph:

1. Transfer credibility from previous owners. 2. Reassure the readers. 3. Reassure the employees. 4. Prepare people for change. 5. Turn focus to being part of something bigger so they don't rock the boat. 6. End on a positive note.

ngoel36• 13 years ago

Jeff Bezos is easily one of the CEOs I respect most in this world.

ra• 13 years ago

Totally.

At the time, I was deeply inspired by his talk at Startup School 08: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA

mattm• 13 years ago

To play devils advocate, pretty much every new CEO or owner says the same thing.

mcv• 13 years ago

But some say it better than others.

general_failure• 13 years ago

Easily one of the best CEO letters I have seen. Most CEO letter have a lot of weasel wordings but this one seems written by a normal person. You know like, I would write like this.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

I would say that is was written to be read by a normal person - compare it to Ballmer's 2400 word memo. Lets hope Bezos doesn't interfere too much with the team and the monetization is not too hard.

My take on the deal - Amazon needs exclusive high quality content that is valuable in real time for its kindle line.

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

4. Prepare people for change.

yea, he didn't seem to say "and I'll be helping here, because I'm kind of experienced with digital business" at the end of this paragraph, which I thought he was going to. It left me feeling like this letter lacked substance - why did you buy the post then, Jeff?

toyg• 13 years ago

If he moves the attention to his track record in the digital space, people start looking at that: and Amazon has a chequered history when it comes to employees' relations.

SpikeDad• 13 years ago

Dear Employees:

You're all going on minimum wage. Don't like it - we are ready to deploy JournalistBot 1.0.

Oh, and we're moving to North Carolina so we can fire you anytime.

Love, Jeff.

pc862• 13 years ago

Rename Raleigh to Washington and they won't even need to change the paper's header.

super-serial• 13 years ago

P.S. Feel free to compete with JournalistBot 1.0 on wages by accepting tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk. I've already created accounts for all of you and given you approval to work on WaPo hits. The going rate is $1.00 per 500 word article.

nicholassmith• 13 years ago

Well Bezos has already shown he's capable of making one low profit margin business a success so he's got form for the role.

It's a classy move, and a very classy letter.

michaelmartin• 13 years ago

Perfectly framed letter, it's interesting that he doesn't make mention of a single negative point or competitor. All very reassuring instead, and it reads like he has just been given the reins essentially and won't be rocking the boat for a while.

jusben1369• 13 years ago

I thought this though was one interesting comment: "and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs."

Hmmmm. First shot fired?

jack-r-abbit• 13 years ago

I don't read it that way. The Internet most certainly has enabled new kinds of competition in the news business. And some of them don't cost much money. For example... people posting crap they see on Twitter. I don't think there was any ill intent in that comment. I read it as a simple fact that they are competing with other news entities with little or no operating costs.

chuhnk2• 13 years ago

I remember a similar speech given by a director of a certain tech company that acquired us. 10 minutes later people were being let go and shortly after 15% of the employees were told they would be getting 6 month contracts.

notatoad• 13 years ago

that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure it sucks to be downsized, but cutting staff you can't afford to pay in order to save a dying company is infinitely better than driving a company into the ground because you don't want to fire anybody.

and i don't see any promise here not to fire people. he explicitly says change will be necessary.

chuhnk2• 13 years ago

Those kinds of decisions need to be made after understanding the responsibilities of each employee that is being let go. Two years later and my job is still required at the large tech company that swallowed us, along with many others that were being terminated.

ferdo3• 13 years ago

One Bilderberger sells paper to another Bilderberger.

He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Recognition
He is also an invitee of the Bilderberg Group and attended conference meetings in Greece 2009,[4] and Spain 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham#Other_roles

pc862• 13 years ago

What has that got to do with anything?

kmfrk2• 13 years ago

The Bilderberg Group is regarded by some as a conspiracy theory wherein a group of people gather to decide how to rule the world. You know, like the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle.

The Guardian constantly make a big fuss over it.

(It's really just a lot of influential people meeting annually(?) in private to have some insightful discussions.)

ferdo3• 13 years ago

Read a history of them and decide for yourself.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bilderberg

gohrt• 13 years ago

Who are the most powerful or wealthy people in the world who are NOT Bildebergers?

VMG2• 13 years ago

They've probably also both been at TED

runn1ng• 13 years ago

And comments like that is exactly why I am considering stopping reading HN comments alltogether. Thanks!

ferdo3• 13 years ago

NP!

ewoodrich• 13 years ago

I've never felt much need for downvote privileges before, but I cannot believe that parent comment and the resulting thread are still positive.

At best this is substance-less noise with respect to the article, and at worst, an attempt to troll users into a heated, pointless, debate.

mydpy2• 13 years ago

Anyone know what he means by this? "While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready."

mydpy2• 13 years ago

I Google'd. From wikipedia: "Graham presided over the Post at a crucial time in its history. The Post played an integral role in unveiling the Watergate conspiracy and ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Graham and editor Bradlee first experienced challenges when they published the content of the Pentagon Papers. When Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought the Watergate story to Bradlee, Graham supported their investigative reporting and Bradlee ran stories about Watergate when few other news outlets were reporting on the matter.

In conjunction with the Watergate scandal, Graham was the subject of one of the best-known threats in American journalistic history. It occurred in 1972, when Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, warned reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." The two words "her tit" were cut on publication."

RickHull• 13 years ago

Bezos:

While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.

TIL that this is a reference to a threat from Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, not to publish the Watergate story:

Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham

caycep2• 13 years ago

Ah in the era of new "scandals", it's a good reminder of the old age of dirty tricks. Although I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I forget if this was put in the Robert Redford movie or not...

rpgmaker• 13 years ago

Holy fucking shit.

larrys• 13 years ago

A nice letter but this:

"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. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

Reminds a little of "Bud Fox" (played by Charlie Sheen) in the first Wall Street where he gave how he was going to turn Blue Star around.

Hard to believe what he says in that paragraph hasn't been tried before and it's like "oops the rest of the newspaper business missed that wow"!

AsymetricCom2• 13 years ago

I don't think it's that they missed it our that other newspapers are immoral, but simply market forces are guiding them to a state where they have no other choice to cut corners.

digisth• 13 years ago

It doesn't seem at all unlikely that we'll be seeing more of this over the coming decade. With the paywall experiments showing mixed results, and not coming close to the old (and still declining) ad revenue, and no magical replacement for their lost classifieds, a new "journalism patronage" model may be what allows many of these organizations to stay afloat. Whether from altruism, ego, a feeling of public service, or a desire for a "propaganda" arm, as some other commenters have stated (which seems very unlikely to me in this case), those with the means may well be what keeps institution-backed investigative journalism alive.

austenallred• 13 years ago

Seriously, how expensive is $250 million to control the most important and influential voice coming out of Washington? Regardless of what motives Bezos may have, that's not a bad deal.

AsymetricCom2• 13 years ago

I love the idea of an single, legal individual owning a media outlet instead of a blameless media conglomerate.

"The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely."

Considering the transparency that AWS provides its customers into its operations, I think we can take this statement seriously. Hopefully we'll see the same kind of service to their customers as AWS, and a shift in the industry to compete with more responsible reporting.

sheikhimran01• 13 years ago

This is a smart move from him!

AYBABTME• 13 years ago

That's good news. I like Jeff Bezos.

Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about [...] and working backwards from there.

Interesting how one of the core tenets of Amazon is:

from the customer and working backwards from there.

Disclaimer: I'm interning with Amazon.

pachydermic• 13 years ago

It's hard to find good, well thought articles that lack the sensationalism and ideological bias many of us (myself included) are more likely to click on/read. I can't speak to whether the news has always been like that (although I'm inclined to think that it hasn't), but it's troubling. There are just a lot of forces which are working against good journalism on the internet - most of which are just a consequence of how the internet is organized.

I really hope this is a good thing. I hope it is not just another data point adding evidence to a downward trend. Please don't mess this up, Bezos.

Jeff Bezos on Post purchase

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