Frustrations Mount at Washington Post as Its Business Struggles

If they're looking to sell off a profitable arm, that's not good. The article says the Post isn't expected to make money (but will it lose money?) in 2023.

 

WaPo layoffs coming early next year:

 

POLITICO Playbook PM: WaPo braces for more layoffs - POLITICO

 

Is this why Taylor Lorenz wants everyone to subscribe to her Substack?

 

What has surprised me about Bezo's ownership of he Washington Post is that he has been content owning one newspaper, given Amazon's history of charging into different business lines.

The Post struggles because the Graham's, for what were sound business reasons in the pre-internet era, ran the print version as a local, not national paper. The Post has never caught up to the Times as a national product.

In the internet era mass advertising in newspapers is basically dead. The days of department stores buying pages of ads for woman's clothing even though they were charged for the combined male and female audience are over. I would guess that the Washington Post employs vastly better data analysts working on delivering targeted audiences to advertisers than virtually every other paper in the country.

I don't understand why Bezo has not bought papers like the Tribune papers. Then Bezos could roll his national paper into the local coverage of papers like the Tribune. Then Bezos could market a differentiated product that offers good national coverage and much better local coverage that the Times.

 

It's because Bezos doesn't want to own newspapers. He wants to own big brands. He wants to own companies that make penis-shaped rockets. He wants to own the Washington NFL team. He doesn't want to own the Allentown Morning Call or the Hartford Courant.

 

Eh, my suspicion would be that Bezo / Amazon business folks have looked at some of the "vast" newspaper empires, like USA Today, and decided that there probably isn't that much benefit to owning more than one newspaper. If you have the WaPo, which can attract subs nationally, why buy up all of these tiny papers? If there's a big story in Podunk, Illinois, the Post can send a reporter there. Buying the Podunk Times instead just increases your expenses for no good reason. They'd rather just sell the Post to people in Podunk.

 

Bezos may follow Warren Buffett and get out of the newspaper business. There are few plaudits to be earned, not even from your reporters, and fewer profits.

 

It’s a vanity purchase for him. Like Buffalo was for Buffett before the Media General deal. It gives Bezos a lot of soft power in D.C. that he wouldn’t have otherwise.

 

Have you heard (about 21,548 times)? She's immunocompromised.

 

What a monster.

 

Just like the movies, why is it only evil billionaires own rockets?