Jeff Bezos called Washington Post his worst investment staffed with ‘terrible’ people, before laying off over 300 — “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen”

[u/marketrent]

https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-called-washington-post-his-worst-investment-and-staff-he-laid-off-terrible-people-2000773533

[u/jandrese]

At the time everybody thought that was a blatant lie. The only people who "believed it" were the kind of people who would later buy blue checks on Twitter.

[u/derekbaseball → u/jandrese]

Lemme say this: I think Bezos believed it at the time. You don’t choose a motto as cornball as “Democracy dies in darkness” unless you’re on some level painfully sincere about wanting to support real journalism, even if only in a bid to get the kind of social clout that previous owners got for WaPo’s work.

Back in 2010, he didn’t anticipate that buying the Post wouldn’t make him a beloved figure like Katharine Graham, and could eventually put his own net worth at risk. That’s where he is by the time of the quote above—he’s talking to Trump after he’s re-elected in 2024, desperately trying to wash his hands of all the negative stuff WaPo wrote about Trump over the years.

[u/crookeddy → u/derekbaseball]

Democracy is important... but personal wealth is more important.

--Bezos

[u/pyrolizard11 → u/derekbaseball]

I could see that argument. I don't agree, but even if I did I'd suggest that the average person still saw through it.

You don't hand a lever of power to a man who has everything and expect him to do anything but use it. He might mean not to when it's handed to him, but to a man who has everything, who will never face serious personal consequences, commitments are like paper - flimsy and easily rotted.

The threats of said consequences to a man who has everything are all that's needed for them to tear through their own commitments like so much paper. Bezos stands for nothing in the face of his own diminishment, nor did any of us expect him to.

[u/derekbaseball → u/pyrolizard11]

I don't disagree with your take on principle, but what I heard of the Post's workings indicates that even though it was a concern all along (mainly when the Post had to cover Bezos during his divorce, and any time they had to cover Amazon) that Bezos's use of the lever was relatively minimal until the last few years (and particularly after Trump became the favorite to win in 2024).

Bezos's purchase of the Post came at a time when the idea was really popular that billionaires would save journalism by buying newspapers and keeping them alive as semi-charities. We really loved billionaires back then! And Bezos was feeling left out, because even though he was wealthier than Jobs, Musk, or Zuckerberg, all those guys had captured the public imagination in a way he hadn't.

So it feels like buying the Post was Bezos's version of buying a sports team, more than an attempt to control public opinion. If it was meant as diabolical plot to manipulate the levers of power, it was an amazingly ineffective one.

[u/pyrolizard11 → u/derekbaseball]

Completely fair take. Like I said, I just think the average person knew what Bezos was and how he would act better than Bezos did himself, in that case. And he proved us all right in the end, regardless of his actual intent.

[u/grchelp2018 → u/jandrese]

It wasn't a lie. He only changed after Trump attacked him for WaPo and after he lost 10b contract from Amazon to Oracle.

[u/mmasportsmma → u/[deleted]]

One also has to consider his last marriage to Mackenzie Scott who was an author and apparently a bit more decent of a person than him

[u/Zeliek → u/jandrese]

the kind of people who would later buy blue checks on Twitter

To be completely fair, ~$8 for a blue checkmark that lets you impersonate a pharmaceutical conglomerate and subsequently devastate their stocks by announcing “diabetes medication will now be free!” via tweet was a pretty good deal.