Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post

In November 2020 PublicAffairs, in partnership with Harvard Business Review Press, published Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, with an introduction by Walter Isaacson. Our contract was with Bezos, personally. His royalties were to go to a nonprofit organization of his choice.

HBRP sold translation rights around the world, and Bezos’s royalties of $750,000 went to the New Orleans Public Library, at Isaacson’s request.

That is my only connection to Bezos.

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I spent eighteen years at the Washington Post, in the era of Katharine Graham’s ownership when Ben Bradlee was executive editor. Although I have been gone for decades, I still identify with the institution and its values.

When Jeff Bezos bought the Post from the Graham family in 2013 for $250 million (half of what his superyacht would cost), I was relieved that its financial problems would be over but apprehensive about what kind of proprietor he would be.

My private suspicion was that as an incomparably astute entrepreneur Bezos felt having the newspaper as an asset would reduce the likelihood that the Department of Justice would initiate antitrust action against Amazon, as had been done against Microsoft years earlier. Given the scale of Bezos’s businesses, this was a minor if very visible acquisition.

For a decade, Bezos’s ownership of the Post went well. My experience with him in working on his book was much the same as Marty Baron’s, the Post’s executive editor from 2013 to 2021, who offered a description in his memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post.

Like Baron, I found that while Bezos was exceptionally busy, when you could finally get his attention the focus was impressive. The title of the book, its cover design, and every word in it, including Walter Isaacson’s introduction, was approved by Bezos.

So, what happened?

In recent years, the Post has started to lose money and subscribers. Leadership changes did not go smoothly to put it mildly. Bezos was active at Blue Origin, his space company, and his private life was transformed with a divorce; a new fiancée, Lauren Sanchez; and a new status as a Hollywood mogul. From a distance, I wondered whether Bezos was too distracted by other things, to think much about the Post, unless he had to.

After a weekend of criticism directed at him, Bezos posted a piece on the Post website Monday making the argument that he had become opposed to presidential endorsements on principle because they undermined public trust in the media. “You are, of course, free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years (he has owned the Post) where I have prevailed upon anyone at the Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.”

We now know it was Bezos’s decision for the Post not to make an endorsement so close to election day. The widespread belief will probaby remain that whatever his public assertions, he would want to avoid antagonism with a prospective Donald Trump administration.

The optics were very bad. So, Bezos will again have to prove his commitment to the newspaper, with additional resources or perhaps by naming a board of undisputed stature to share his oversight on both financial and editorial matters.

What is my guess about this episode?

Whatever argument he makes, I think Bezos understands that the Post is not the asset he thought he would have as an element of his reputation for civic engagement and a small part of his business empire where he could, among other things, test innovations in technology. In his piece he says that the Post is a “complexifier” for him, “but it turns out that I’m also a complexifier for the Post.”

When Bezos has a problem, he usually deals with it. He eliminated the Amazon bookstore chain, for example, and revamped Amazon Studios when its programming wasn’t working. There are reasons Bezos is one of the world’s richest people.

The Washington Post has become a problem for Jeff Bezos, which is why the endorsement controversy’s implications going forward will continue to be ominous.

Coming Thursday, as November 5 looms: Why? History Will Have to Decide