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Jeff Bezos on Post purchase
- shawndumas 13y agoprint view http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-purchase/2013/08/05/e5b293de-fe0d-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_print.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-pu...
- bennyg 13y agoI'm not sure if the intentions are true to form, but that's a very beautifully crafted letter.
- vanderZwan 13y agoAnd in the worst case we have new material for a Citizen Kane remake.
- hhorsley 13y agoI wonder what his "rosebud" is
- gwern 13y ago"Kindle".
- arjie 13y agoApt, considering what happened to Rosebud.
- gwern 13y agoYes, that was the joke. (Kindle isn't anywhere near as obscure as Rosebud, so even though the word 'kindle' has the same syllable count and stress as 'rosebud', it doesn't seem like a good _Citizen Kane_ allusion - until you remember what happened to Rosebud at the end of the movie.)
- subsystem 13y agoSlick 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 13y agoJeff Bezos is easily one of the CEOs I respect most in this world.
- ra 13y agoTotally. At the time, I was deeply inspired by his talk at Startup School 08: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA
- mattm 13y agoTo play devils advocate, pretty much every new CEO or owner says the same thing.
- mcv 13y agoBut some say it better than others.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wonderzombie 13y agoSome care enough to spend the money & time to hire better PR teams than others.
- general_failure 13y agoEasily 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.
- SpikeDad 13y agoDear 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.
- pc86 13y agoRename Raleigh to Washington and they won't even need to change the paper's header.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- super-serial 13y agoP.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 13y agoWell 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 13y agoPerfectly 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoI 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.
- chuhnk 13y agoI 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 13y agothat'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.
- chuhnk 13y agoThose 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.
- ferdo 13y agoOne 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 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham#Other_roles
- pc86 13y agoWhat has that got to do with anything?
- kmfrk 13y agoThe 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.)
- caycep 13y agoThen again, Larry Lessig got invited this year and reported that it was in fact like any other boring conference. Unless they got to him. Run Larry Run!
- stevewillows 13y agoRef: http://www.lessig.org/2013/06/on-bilderberg/ http://www.lessig.org/2013/06/on-bilderberg/
- nhaehnle 13y ago(It's really just a lot of influential people meeting annually(?) in private to have some insightful discussions.) Which ultimately means that the conspiracy theory is correct, except that reality sounds less flashy. After all, a democratic society has all sorts of proper channels to have such discussions in. Meeting in such an invite-only club that is not part of the official checks and balances is somewhat problematic, because it leads to decisions being pushed through that did not emerge from democratic processes.
- mydpy 13y agoAnyone 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."
- mydpy 13y agoI 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 13y agoBezos: > 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham
- larrys 13y agoA 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"!
- AsymetricCom 13y agoI 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 13y agoIt 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 13y agoSeriously, 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.
- AsymetricCom 13y agoI 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 13y agoThis is a smart move from him!
- AYBABTME 13y agoThat'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 13y agoIt'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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]