Jeff Bezos on Post purchase | Hacker News Reader

Jeff Bezos on Post purchase

washingtonpost.com

224 points_pius63 comments

Bezos:

> While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.

TIL that this is a reference to a threat from Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, not to publish the Watergate story:

> Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham

Ah in the era of new "scandals", it's a good reminder of the old age of dirty tricks. Although I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I forget if this was put in the Robert Redford movie or not...

Holy fucking shit.

Slick letter, by paragraph:

1. Transfer credibility from previous owners. 2. Reassure the readers. 3. Reassure the employees. 4. Prepare people for change. 5. Turn focus to being part of something bigger so they don't rock the boat. 6. End on a positive note.

Jeff Bezos is easily one of the CEOs I respect most in this world.

Totally.

At the time, I was deeply inspired by his talk at Startup School 08: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA

Easily one of the best CEO letters I have seen. Most CEO letter have a lot of weasel wordings but this one seems written by a normal person. You know like, I would write like this.

I would say that is was written to be read by a normal person - compare it to Ballmer's 2400 word memo. Lets hope Bezos doesn't interfere too much with the team and the monetization is not too hard.

My take on the deal - Amazon needs exclusive high quality content that is valuable in real time for its kindle line.

4. Prepare people for change.

yea, he didn't seem to say "and I'll be helping here, because I'm kind of experienced with digital business" at the end of this paragraph, which I thought he was going to. It left me feeling like this letter lacked substance - why did you buy the post then, Jeff?

If he moves the attention to his track record in the digital space, people start looking at that: and Amazon has a chequered history when it comes to employees' relations.

To play devils advocate, pretty much every new CEO or owner says the same thing.

But some say it better than others.

Deleted comment

Some care enough to spend the money & time to hire better PR teams than others.

A nice letter but this:

"Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there. I’m excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

Reminds a little of "Bud Fox" (played by Charlie Sheen) in the first Wall Street where he gave how he was going to turn Blue Star around.

Hard to believe what he says in that paragraph hasn't been tried before and it's like "oops the rest of the newspaper business missed that wow"!

I don't think it's that they missed it our that other newspapers are immoral, but simply market forces are guiding them to a state where they have no other choice to cut corners.

It doesn't seem at all unlikely that we'll be seeing more of this over the coming decade. With the paywall experiments showing mixed results, and not coming close to the old (and still declining) ad revenue, and no magical replacement for their lost classifieds, a new "journalism patronage" model may be what allows many of these organizations to stay afloat. Whether from altruism, ego, a feeling of public service, or a desire for a "propaganda" arm, as some other commenters have stated (which seems very unlikely to me in this case), those with the means may well be what keeps institution-backed investigative journalism alive.

Seriously, how expensive is $250 million to control the most important and influential voice coming out of Washington? Regardless of what motives Bezos may have, that's not a bad deal.

I remember a similar speech given by a director of a certain tech company that acquired us. 10 minutes later people were being let go and shortly after 15% of the employees were told they would be getting 6 month contracts.

that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure it sucks to be downsized, but cutting staff you can't afford to pay in order to save a dying company is infinitely better than driving a company into the ground because you don't want to fire anybody.

and i don't see any promise here not to fire people. he explicitly says change will be necessary.

Those kinds of decisions need to be made after understanding the responsibilities of each employee that is being let go. Two years later and my job is still required at the large tech company that swallowed us, along with many others that were being terminated.

Well Bezos has already shown he's capable of making one low profit margin business a success so he's got form for the role.

It's a classy move, and a very classy letter.

I'm not sure if the intentions are true to form, but that's a very beautifully crafted letter.

And in the worst case we have new material for a Citizen Kane remake.

I wonder what his "rosebud" is

"Kindle".

Apt, considering what happened to Rosebud.

Yes, that was the joke. (Kindle isn't anywhere near as obscure as Rosebud, so even though the word 'kindle' has the same syllable count and stress as 'rosebud', it doesn't seem like a good _Citizen Kane_ allusion - until you remember what happened to Rosebud at the end of the movie.)

Anyone know what he means by this? "While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready."

I Google'd. From wikipedia: "Graham presided over the Post at a crucial time in its history. The Post played an integral role in unveiling the Watergate conspiracy and ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Graham and editor Bradlee first experienced challenges when they published the content of the Pentagon Papers. When Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought the Watergate story to Bradlee, Graham supported their investigative reporting and Bradlee ran stories about Watergate when few other news outlets were reporting on the matter.

In conjunction with the Watergate scandal, Graham was the subject of one of the best-known threats in American journalistic history. It occurred in 1972, when Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, warned reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." The two words "her tit" were cut on publication."

Perfectly framed letter, it's interesting that he doesn't make mention of a single negative point or competitor. All very reassuring instead, and it reads like he has just been given the reins essentially and won't be rocking the boat for a while.

I thought this though was one interesting comment: "and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs."

Hmmmm. First shot fired?

I don't read it that way. The Internet most certainly has enabled new kinds of competition in the news business. And some of them don't cost much money. For example... people posting crap they see on Twitter. I don't think there was any ill intent in that comment. I read it as a simple fact that they are competing with other news entities with little or no operating costs.

print view

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/jeff-bezos-on-post-pu...

One Bilderberger sells paper to another Bilderberger.

> He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Recognition

> He is also an invitee of the Bilderberg Group and attended conference meetings in Greece 2009,[4] and Spain 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham#Other_roles

I've never felt much need for downvote privileges before, but I cannot believe that parent comment and the resulting thread are still positive.

At best this is substance-less noise with respect to the article, and at worst, an attempt to troll users into a heated, pointless, debate.

And comments like that is exactly why I am considering stopping reading HN comments alltogether. Thanks!

NP!

Who are the most powerful or wealthy people in the world who are NOT Bildebergers?

They've probably also both been at TED

What has that got to do with anything?

The Bilderberg Group is regarded by some as a conspiracy theory wherein a group of people gather to decide how to rule the world. You know, like the Hellfire Club's Inner Circle.

The Guardian constantly make a big fuss over it.

(It's really just a lot of influential people meeting annually(?) in private to have some insightful discussions.)

(It's really just a lot of influential people meeting annually(?) in private to have some insightful discussions.)

Which ultimately means that the conspiracy theory is correct, except that reality sounds less flashy.

After all, a democratic society has all sorts of proper channels to have such discussions in. Meeting in such an invite-only club that is not part of the official checks and balances is somewhat problematic, because it leads to decisions being pushed through that did not emerge from democratic processes.

Conversation at events is a proper channel. It's not like one day you cross a threshold of influential-ness where it's unethical for you to share ideas with others who have crossed that threshold.

We may not trust the people in this world who tend to gain that level of influence, but I wouldn't describe the general idea of influential people talking, even in a group setting, as problematic.

"[O]fficial checks and balances" are for governments, not groups of private individuals. They don't have the power of the state behind them.

They don't have the power of the state behind them.

No, they have the power of many states behind them, both through corruption and plain economic stranglehold.

In any case, who do you think participates in the Bilderberg group?

The 2009 meeting participants in Greece included: Greek prime minister Kostas Karamanlis; Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen; Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt; U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg; U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner; World Bank president Robert Zoellick; President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso; Queen Sofia of Spain; and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

Not that I give much credence to the conspiracy theories.

I wonder how many people who subscribe to this idea come from ivy-league universities or Oxbridge.

Here's one: http://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/graduates/gradstudents/fa272@cam....

(From the Bio) Frank Albo is a PhD student under the supervision of David Watkin and James Stevens Curl. His doctoral research focuses on the influence of Freemasonry in the Nineteenth Century British Gothic Revival. His publications explore Masonic interactions and networks in British and French architecture and garden design, including recent work on the architect Charles Robert Cockerell for Le Monde Maçonnique à l'époque des Lumières (2012). He is presently a Wingate and Canada Council Award scholar at Peterhouse.

Ask him about bilderberg sometime, if you have an hour and a half to listen.

Well, that assumes that plans are made and deals struck which carry weight the next day.

If they actually just spend the entire time gossiping and making catty comments to each other it's way less interesting.

I'm not so sure about that. Gossiping and commenting also has the potential to form shared opinions and values within the group that attends the meeting, not to mention a certain group-think. There is a possibility that these values diverge from what would result from public discourse.

I would hypothesize that the mere fact of being invited to a traditionally secret club tends to make people more selfish, arrogant, and prone to abuse their power. I don't know this for a fact, but other results of psychological studies that I have heard of make it seem very plausible.

This is especially important with politicians. Politicians are supposed to be servants of the people. If we take psychological studies that point to a "fake it until you become it"-effect seriously, we should demand of politicians to also behave and carry themselves like servants. The Bilderberger group is a venue (admittedly, one of many) where politicians can become detached from their duties.

So like I said, it's less flashy than a Hollywood-movie conspiracy, but important nonetheless.

Then again, Larry Lessig got invited this year and reported that it was in fact like any other boring conference.

Unless they got to him. Run Larry Run!

Ref: http://www.lessig.org/2013/06/on-bilderberg/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy

Read a history of them and decide for yourself.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bilderberg

quote

> Skeptics argue that members can spend their private time hatching plans to control world politics and economics, ensuring the wealthy and powerful maintain their powerful grip on an enslaved population that keeps the machinery running

Sounds bogus. The plans are already hatched as documented in the the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they obviously rather spend the time drinking the blood of blue-eyed christian children.

Besides, we all know that the élite meet up over VTC when no one suspects they are subverting the world, and leave their boring chit-chat for their "semi-public" appearances for the paranoid to fret over. That way they can let the truth of their conference (when it does leak) work to their advantage, while none are the wiser about the underlying conspiracies! ;)

That's good news. I like Jeff Bezos.

> Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about [...] and working backwards from there.

Interesting how one of the core tenets of Amazon is:

> from the customer and working backwards from there.

Disclaimer: I'm interning with Amazon.

It's hard to find good, well thought articles that lack the sensationalism and ideological bias many of us (myself included) are more likely to click on/read. I can't speak to whether the news has always been like that (although I'm inclined to think that it hasn't), but it's troubling. There are just a lot of forces which are working against good journalism on the internet - most of which are just a consequence of how the internet is organized.

I really hope this is a good thing. I hope it is not just another data point adding evidence to a downward trend. Please don't mess this up, Bezos.

This is a smart move from him!

Dear Employees:

You're all going on minimum wage. Don't like it - we are ready to deploy JournalistBot 1.0.

Oh, and we're moving to North Carolina so we can fire you anytime.

Love, Jeff.

P.S. Feel free to compete with JournalistBot 1.0 on wages by accepting tasks on Amazon Mechanical Turk. I've already created accounts for all of you and given you approval to work on WaPo hits. The going rate is $1.00 per 500 word article.

Rename Raleigh to Washington and they won't even need to change the paper's header.

I love the idea of an single, legal individual owning a media outlet instead of a blameless media conglomerate.

>"The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely."

Considering the transparency that AWS provides its customers into its operations, I think we can take this statement seriously. Hopefully we'll see the same kind of service to their customers as AWS, and a shift in the industry to compete with more responsible reporting.

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