For all of the attention lavished on the sale of the Washington Post, much still is not known about the transaction. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is reported to have bought the Post for $250 million, but were there other bidders?
When my former paper, The Des Moines Register, was sold, the company’s board of directors first put up a for sale sign. That action followed receipt of an unsolicited offer for the paper. The directors figured that, in fairness to stockholders, it should open the bidding to all interested parties. (Incidentally, among the bidders for the Register was the Washington Post.) Was the Bezos bid for the Post also an unsolicited offer? What followed receipt of that offer? Did directors have it evaluated, and if so, by whom? What role did the Graham family play? And what did individual Graham family members make on the sale?
Was Warren Buffett consulted? Buffett is a former director of the Washington Post company. He recently was active in the acquisition of a number of newspapers for his own company and would have had a good feel for the value of the Post in the current market, but bringing Buffett into the picture might have raised conflict of interest questions. In any event, Buffett’s name has not figured in any of the commentary I’ve seen on sale of the Post. His take on the sale would be newsworthy at least.
The press does not generally do a good job of covering itself. But this was not that kind of close-to-home story, except for the Post. The sale was a major event in the history of the newspaper business that deserved comprehensive coverage. Perhaps the press will yet play catch-up and give the public a fuller accounting of the historic sale of the Washington Post.
2 comments:
From what I have read online, the Graham family used the investment banking firm of Allen & Co. to solicit offers privately (http://qz.com/112102/jeff-bezos-was-the-highest-bidder-and-best-steward-for-the-washington-post/ and http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/08/washington-post-sale-to-jeff-bezos.html). I have also read speculation about Bezos' objectives. Besides the obvious one of enhanced national influence, I found two intriguing ones. First he will increase the web sophistication of the POST. This can only help the paper. When the GUARDIAN's superb reporting on NSA began, the POST dismissed the GUARDIAN as a "small paper". While arguable when looking at staff size and print run, the POST seemed oblivious to the fact that the GUARDIAN gets roughly twice as many web viewings each day as the POST -- about 32 million vs. 16 million. Second, newspapers have a system of same-day delivery within a trade area which may have significant value which others think Bezos may seek to use to deliver more than newspapers. Enjoying your web site very much.
Gil, I badly misremembered the web traffic and want to correct my error. THE GUARDIAN has 23.2 million unique visitors to its web site each month, while THE POST has 17.2 million unique visitors monthly. My apologies. I obviously need a good copy editor.
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