Should we be surprised that newspapers – in the case one of the world’s most famous the Washington Post – have become rich men’s trophy assets?
These things don’t alway work out of course, venerable weekly magazine Newsweek is changing hands yet again after some rich folk (and Tina Brown) failed to work their magic on it.
So why does Bezos, who paid his $250m in cash, think he can revive a once-great newspaper?
In the online world, which he knows as well as anyone, newspaper brands remain important: they still attract lots and lots of online traffic. Former BBC director-general Mark Thompson seems to be having some success in boosting the Post’s great rival the New York Times’s digital subscriptions.
And the UK’s Mail Online, which remains free, has built up a huge readership (including in America) with its diet of wardrobe malfunctions and celebrity gossip.
Bezos, of course, has done his bit for the printed word at Amazon, not just with humungous book sales but also the hugely successful Kindle e-reader. Helped somewhat, it must be said, by Apple’s dumb refusal to supply anti-glare screens which make iPads useless for reading books outside.
Buit newspapers have always been owned by fat cats with (when it comes to newspapers) more money than sense. It will be fascinating to see if Bezos, a wily operator, can confound the cynics.