Their new focus would forego revenue per reader in favor of acquiring more readers. The old model relied on generating a high revenue per reader. With Bezos's help, The Post developed a new strategy to “take advantage of that gift.” They implemented a new business model.
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But it did offer “one gift: free global distribution.” The internet destroyed most advantages newspapers had built. It needed to translate to a global and national publication.”īezos drew his optimism from one simple fact. I looked at that and I was super optimistic. If it were hopeless that would not be something I would get involved in. “I wanted to look in the mirror and be sure I was optimistic that it could work. Instead, he realized, he had to believe there was a pathway to recovery. He wasn’t planning on providing operational hospice care for the Washington Post.
There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”īut Bezos didn’t want to purchase it simply to slow the institution’s death if it was fated to fail. The Washington Post has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy. “It is the newspaper in the capital city of the most important country in the world. But as soon as I started thinking about it that way, I started to realize this is an important institution…. “If this were a financially upside-down, salty snack food company, the answer would be no. Would the demise of this institution matter? Instead, Bezos relied on intuition to guide him.īezos began to think about the meaning behind the institution. “The internet was just eroding all the advantages that local newspapers had. It wasn’t an intrinsic operational issue, but the changing landscape. Bezos admitted the business was “upside-down.” As a high fixed-cost business, they were bleeding money. The financials of the business weren’t promising. “I had to do some soul-searching….Is this something I want to get involved in?” he said. If he did decide to do it, he knew he would have to put "some heart into it and some work into it." Graham reminded him it wasn’t newspaper expertise they were after, but mastery of the internet. By Bezos’s own accord, he wasn’t looking to purchase or invest in the newspaper business at all. Bezos countered that idea he had no interest in such an investment.
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