Will the Washington Post become an Amazon Content Farm?
My colleague James Mignano penned this post on
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' recent US250 million purchase of Washington Post. Some
are calling it a vanity play...others feel if anyone can turn around a dying
medium, it's Bezos.
If have another take. Though it's a personal acquisition (not Amazon) at this stage, long term I see this as a content play for Amazon. Instead of scrambling to create compelling, original content and jettison the brochure-ware of old, why not take a USD250 million short cut and buy a team of skilled journalists? That way Amazon products (Kindle, Prime, phone (?)) can be differentiated from the masses as homes for exclusive, compelling news content...