The Washington Post is reporting that it's been sold to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million in cash. Amazon itself is not involved in the deal.
From the Post's article on the sale:
Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.
The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington’s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation’s politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, whose reporters have broken such stories as the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandals and disclosures about the National Security Administration’s surveillance program in May. Full article
The paper has been famously owned by the Graham family for over 80 years. The Post says Katharine Weymouth, a fourth-generation Graham family member, will remain as publisher and CEO.
Just over the weekend, the New York Times Co. announced the sale of another print-media stalwart, the Boston Globe, to Red Sox owner John Henry for $70 million. The Times bought the paper in 1993 for ... uh, this can't be right, but it is ... $1.1 billion. (And that's in 1993 dollars.)
So what happened between then and now?