A lot of people believe the Internet killed the newspaper.
Yesterday, they tried buying one.
Jeff Bezos, the genius behind Amazon.com and the notion of selling books online, yesterday bought the Washington Post and other newspapers in the Post group for $250 million.
You can read all the details here.
Bezos is buying the newspaper as an individual - albeit a very rich one. Amazon is not involved in the deal.
Hey, if Bezos can do for newspapers what he did for buying other forms of the printed word in books, I'll be more than happy to sing his hosannas.
On Monday, in my print column, I spoke of the convulsive changes that have shaken the newspaper world in the past few years. It looks like Bezos would agree.
"The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs," Bezos said. "There is no map, and charting a parth ahead will not be easy. Will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment."
One day at a time, folks. One day at a time.
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