Amazon's Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post for $250m

Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos will buy the Washington Post newspaper for $250 million in a surprise deal that ends the Graham family's 80 years of ownership and hands one of the country's most influential publications to the businessman whose Internet company has transformed retailing.

Bezos, hailed by many as technology visionary, called his acquisition a personal endeavor and reassured employees and readers of the 135-year-old newspaper he will preserve its journalistic tradition, while driving innovation.

The acquisition, the latest in a flurry of deals for print publications including the New York Times Co's sale of the Boston Globe for $70 million, is a another sign of the unprecedented challenges newspapers face as advertising revenue and readership decline.

The Washington Post suffers from the same hurdles besieging big city newspapers across the United States. The company's newspaper division reported an operating loss of $49.3 million for the 6 months ending June compared to a loss of $33.2 million during the same period last year.

Bezos, who has built Seattle-based Amazon.com into a shopping and online technology force over the last two decades, made a small foray into media earlier this year with an investment in Internet news site Business Insider.

Source: BBC, Chicago Tribune