Amazon's Founder to Buy The Washington Post Christine Haughney - The New York Times
go to original August 7, 2013

Jeffrey P. Bezos, left, the founder of Amazon.com, and Donald Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, at the Allen & Company media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, last month. (Andrew Gombert/European Pressphoto Agency)

The Washington Post, the newspaper whose reporting helped topple a president and inspired a generation of journalists, is being sold for $250 million to the founder of Amazon.com, Jeffrey P. Bezos, in a deal that has shocked the industry.

Donald E. Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, and the third generation of the Graham family to lead the paper, told the staff about the sale late Monday afternoon. They had gathered together in the newspaper’s auditorium at the behest of the publisher, Katharine Weymouth, his niece.

“I, along with Katharine Weymouth and our board of directors, decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post (after a transaction that would be in the best interest of our shareholders),” Mr. Graham said in a written statement.

In the auditorium, he closed his remarks by saying that nobody in the room should be sad  -  except, he said, “for me.”

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