|
硅谷英雄，亚马逊CEO 贝索斯砸2.5亿美元收购华盛顿邮报资产，再次印证传统媒体的没落，只能向硅谷寻求帮助，期望走出危机。 新媒体或者硅谷高手怎么运营传统媒体，我也十分感兴趣，会不会最终也只是倒弄资本游戏，包装拆分再上市/被收购退出？ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, is buying the Washington Post and other newspapers for $250 million, continuing a wave of transactions involving famous media brands that have struggled to compete in the digital age.
The sale puts one of the most famous newspapers in the U.S.—the publication credited with breaking the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation almost 40 years ago—in the hands of a Web businessman who rose to prominence only in the past 20 years. It comes as many newspapers are struggling to survive. Print newspaper ad revenues fell 55% between 2007 and 2012, according to the Newspaper Association of America, as advertisers and readers have defected to the Web. Some newspapers have been forced to slash costs and in some cases file for bankruptcy. Just three days ago the New York TimesCo. NYT -0.42% sold the Boston Globe for $70 million, having paid $1.1 billion for it in 1993.
The Internet is "transforming almost every element of the news business," Mr. Bezos said in a letter to Washington Post employees. "There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment," Mr. Bezos wrote. He added that he won't be involved in the day-to-day management of the newspaper. In an interview Monday, Washington Post Co. Chairman Don E. Graham praised Mr. Bezos's track record as a well-connected industry innovator with the patience to make difficult businesses profitable, but he acknowledged challenges. "Jeff is a business person, not a magician. He is going to have to work as hard as everyone else to figure out the problem of news. But he brings a lot," Mr. Graham said. Early this year, Mr. Graham brought in investment bank Allen & Co. to begin looking for someone to buy the Washington Post. The decision to sell had come after months of reflection among the company's board members, said one person familiar with the situation. Mr. Graham "couldn't see how to grow [the paper] and began to wonder if there was a better owner," the person said. Mr. Graham spoke with many prospects directly, drawing on his extensive network in Silicon Valley. Mr. Graham, who has been an adviser to Facebook Inc. FB +2.99%chief Mark Zuckerberg, has spent years building relationships with technology titans, including Mr. Bezos, who had helped him make important hires such as Amazon veteran Vijay Ravindran, the head of WaPo Labs. Mr. Graham personally reached out to Mr. Bezos early, said a person with direct knowledge of the deal. Initially Mr. Bezos held back, citing a lack of time to properly deal with a transaction. Then, in July, Mr. Bezos wrote an email to Mr. Graham saying, "If you're interested, I am," said another person familiar with the situation. Mr. Bezos, who launched Amazon in 1995, is worth about $26 billion, courtesy of his stake in the e-commerce giant. As part of a planned stock sale, Mr. Bezos took in $185 million this month, representing less than 1% of his holdings. Forbes ranked him as the 19th most-wealthy man in the world, just ahead of Google Inc.'s Larry Page. Mr. Bezos wasn't available for an interview. In discussing a possible deal, Messrs. Graham and Bezos had two three-hour conversations in person on the West Coast, before Mr. Bezos sent a personal team to Washington, D.C. At the time, the company was talking to other suitors, a small collection of individuals, like Mr. Bezos, and strategic companies, said people familiar with the talks. Washington Post Co. will change its name after the sale, although a new name hasn't been disclosed. The company, which will keep its interests in education and television, will retain its real estate, and a few journalism properties, including the website Slate.com and Foreign Policy magazine. Recently, Post Co. has diversified with small acquisitions in health-care and furnace parts. Over the past decade, the Post's daily newspaper circulation has shrunk to 472,000 in 2012 from 769,000 in 2002. In the company's newspapers division, revenue fell 31% to $582 million during the same period, according to regulatory filings. Meanwhile, operating income over the decade went from a profit of $109 million in 2002 to a loss of $53.7 million in 2012. To combat the losses, the Post has gone through rounds of cost cuts. This year, it replaced Marcus Brauchli as editor of the paper with Martin Baron. The Post has already sold Newsweek in 2010 after a sharp decline at the newsweekly. While the flagship newspaper was only a small part of the company—which also owns cable systems, TV stations and the Kaplan education business—a slump at Kaplan had added to financial stresses on the company. Mr. Graham, whose grandfather Eugene Meyer acquired the paper in 1933, said in a letter to staff that "as the newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we have no answers," he and Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, his niece, had begun "to ask ourselves if our small public company was still the best home for the newspaper." The Post's revenue had "declined seven years in a row," he noted, adding that "our answer had to be cost cuts and we knew there was a limit to that." Mr. Graham insisted that Mr. Bezos keep Ms. Weymouth on as CEO and publisher, as well as Stephen P. Hills, president and general manager. In a separate letter, Ms. Weymouth described today as one "my family and I never expected to come." Mr. Bezos had previously invested in the business news website Business Insider. For Mr. Graham, Mr. Bezos was a strong candidate because of his apparent genuine interest in journalism, his strength in building technology products, and his willingness to pay an appropriate price for the paper, said a person familiar with the situation. Mr. Graham and the board also appreciated Mr. Bezos's past help in finding strong employees for the Washington Post, such as Mr. Ravindran, seeing it as a sign that he had a good understanding of the type of people the Post needed. One media executive who knows Mr. Bezos said the Amazon chief likely sees the acquisition as an opportunity to further develop the Washington Post's digital strategy in a bid to show how old and new journalism can intersect. "He still sees a role for journalism, and it's an extension of his interest in books and writers," said this person. "It also gives him a pulpit in Washington. He might see that as a plus, but it could also prove a minus based on the editorial positions the newspaper takes." With the Washington Post newspaper now sold for $250 million to a company controlled by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the publicly-listed Washington Post Company will live on under a new name. The flagship newspaper may have given the business its name, but it has been a long time since it was the biggest part of the company. Here is how the Washington Post Company’s various units contributed to total revenues in 2012:
It might have been a revenue contributor, but selling the newspaper won’t be a drag on profitability. The newspaper division made an operating loss of $53.7 million in 2012, while the parent company posted net income of $131 million. The post-newspaper Washington Post Co. will still hold on to some online media properties, as well as physical property, it s aid in the deal announcement: Slate magazine, TheRoot.com and Foreign Policy are not part of the transaction and will remain with The Washington Post Company, as will the WaPo Labs and SocialCode businesses, the Company’s interest in Classified Ventures and certain real estate assets, including the headquarters building in downtown Washington, DC. The Washington Post Company, which also owns Kaplan, Post–Newsweek Stations and Cable ONE, will be changing its name in connection with the transaction; no new name has yet been announced. The biggest part of the business will remain Kaplan, the education company that runs physical and online higher education programs, as well as test preparation services. After Kaplan, the next biggest units will both be in the TV business – the Cable One cable TV business, and Post-Newsweek Stations, which owns a six local TV stations in Texas, Michigan and Florida. The local channels had their most profitable year ever in 2013, lifted by both the presidential election and the Summer Olympics. The unit “will, of course, have a down year in profits in 2013,” the company said in its 2012 annual report, but is still expected to outperform 2011, the last non-election year. | 
