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The WP reportedly lost $100m in 2024. So one the one hand, you might understand Bezos wanting things to change. On the other hand, Blue Origin reportedly loses
by nayroclade 7mo ago
The WP reportedly lost $100m in 2024. So one the one hand, you might understand Bezos wanting things to change. On the other hand, Blue Origin reportedly loses multiple billions of $ per year, and has done for decades, which Bezos pumps in without insisting on massive cuts or layoffs.
- ballooney 7mo agoAbout the same as Bezos invested in the Melania documentary, watched by about six people.
- rwmj 7mo agoThe Melania documentary is an important artifact that historians will be talking about for decades, although not in the way those involved anticipated.
- emchammer 7mo agoLeni Riefenstahl taught me everything I know about lighting and camera angles!
- nearbuy 7mo agoWikipedia says it "had the highest opening for a non-concert documentary since the $10.7 million opening for Chimpanzee (2012)". It did well by documentary standards, poorly compared to its budget, and the stories about empty theaters are mostly in areas with very weak Trump support. Those stories spread mainly because they makes us feel good.
- DoesntMatter22 7mo agoBlue Origin in theory could make money some day. WP definitely not
- zzleeper 7mo agoI'm sure he didn't bought the WaPo to make a profit. More like to have an influence.
- mrwh 7mo agoIt's noblesse oblige, or rather an example of the end of noblesse oblige, that the super rich don't even have to pretend to do things for others any more. Which, I would suggest, is a short-sighted and ultimately hubristicaly stupid change...
- ithkuil 7mo agoAnd influence he got. Gutting it was an act of influence and carried the message he wanted to carry across quite perfectly
- GolfPopper 7mo agoHis reason for buying it has been right there in front of us all along: Democracy Dies In Darkenss It's just like "To Serve Man".
- thomassmith65 7mo agoThis is absurdly pedantic, but the fact that the Twilight Zone episode relies on a pun makes the two phrases somewhat different. They would be alike if the book title had been "If Mankind isn't at the Table, Mankind is on the Menu"
- deaux 7mo ago> The WP reportedly lost $100m in 2024. So one the one hand, you might understand Bezos wanting things to change. You don't even "might understand" this, because you're intelligent enough to grasp that its profitability as a newspaper was never a factor in Bezos' desire to purchase the WP.
- potro 7mo agoThere is quite a bit of difference between not making a profit and consistently losing around $100m a year with apparently no path to at least revenue neutrality.
- rapnie 7mo agoSo it loses pocket change for a multi billionaire? Edit: The consideration being that perhaps billionaire toys need not be profitable per se, but are purchased for different reasons. Twitter is another example here.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- potro 7mo agoA $100m here, a $100m there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.
- cenamus 7mo agoYeah, he could only keep this going for another 2600 years
- bravetraveler 7mo agoY'all are talking about the real Scrooge McDuck.
- ZeroGravitas 7mo agoThat's assuming the pro-billionaire propaganda it produces doesn't make him many hundreds of millions more. In that light an arbitrary but vaguely plausible reason to fire anyone who insists on doing actual journalism and not billionaire propaganda is a useful tool.
- bell-cot 7mo agoRich businessmen have expensive hobbies, and those can look a lot like real businesses. Jeff could also buy a couple oceanographic research vessels tomorrow, spend a few years looking for sunken Spanish treasure ships, then get bored and sell the whole "business" in a liquidation auction. Yes, Jeff and his companies keep making idealistic, pro-social statements. Unfortunately, such statements are little more than socially mandated lies. Which millions of people really want to believe - so be cautious about calling them out.
- LarsDu88 7mo agoThere's an obvious difference between the two in that Blue Origin is the gateway to multibillion dollar prospective markets that current have virtually no incumbents (other than one very big obvious one). Whereas the WP does not have any prospective future growth trajectory whatsoever b/c it's competing with the endless turd spigot that is social media.
- thrance 7mo agoThe WP is his propaganda tool contributing to maintaining this billionaire-friendly environment. Trump gave the bourgeoisie trillions in tax cuts last year, and Bezos is a major receiver of this present himself. It's hard to quantify, but these captured media together are much more valuable to oligarchs than any other ventures of theirs, certainly more than their space toys. Hence why Ellison would spend $100B of his personal wealth to add CNN to his catalogue, or why Musk spent so much on X and doesn't seem to care too much about making it profitable.
- UncleMeat 7mo agoYep. One of the big lessons of the last decade is that media can have billionaires as their primary market. The Free Press got huge because of infusions of cash from the rich. Media that flatters the opinions of billionaires and projects their propaganda into the world can be enormously valuable even if it isn't making traditional cash. It is a return to a patronage model. Garry Tan has even said this expressly. That the rich should simply own their own parallel media so they can project their will against the will of the people.
- LarsDu88 7mo agoHere's a controversial opinion -- it's actually always been this way. Hearst used his newspapers to manipulate the American public into war against the Spanish Empire. Government lies (babies in incubators, yellow cake...) were used to push two Iraq wars on the American public by the media. The abnormal thing is that we had maybe 10-15 years where the press put up at least a pretense of acting impartial as power shifted from pineapple and arms companies to tech monopolies.
- vasco 7mo agoThat's about 3 years of his boat's upkeep, regardless if it goes anywhere or not.
- phplovesong 7mo agoWP used to be left leaning, and with bezos the move has gone right. So naturally all readers move on to some other medium. Business 101
- halJordan 7mo agoWP was not sold to him because it was healthy and thriving in the first place.
- beAbU 7mo agoYou can't compare the two. BO is essentially an R&D firm.
- tpm 7mo agoSo it's a cost center. Exactly like the public relations tool that WP is. Until due to cuts public loses interest in it, at which point it ceases to be an effective tool and keeps being only a cost center.
- tren_hard 7mo agoBO definitely does layoffs, and is run just as awfully as Amazon (look who the CEO of BO is as of 2024). Doesn’t matter if you’re in an office or on the manufacturing floor, the hours and demands are terrible there. Everyone I know that has worked there echoed the same problems that Amazon had.