Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will purchase The Washington Post, in a deal that took the newspaper industry by surprise, Nick Wingfield and David Streitfeld report.
The purchase price of $250 million is a pittance for a man who ranked 19th on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, with an estimated fortune of more than $25 billion. But the deal was still an astonishing move for a magnate who has kept a low profile in politics and has said almost nothing about his interest in newspapers, except that he reads them.
Nonetheless, Mr. Bezos will now have a microphone as powerful as anyone in Washington and outside the West Wing. He brings with him a sort of libertarian bent, having supported gay marriage in the state of Washington and fought higher income taxes on wealthy people.
“Of the businesspeople I know, he and Bill Gates are the two most intellectually curious people I know,†said Rob Glaser, the founder of another Seattle technology company, RealNetworks, who has known Mr. Bezos since the 1990s. “It doesn’t surprise me that Jeff would find something with the intellectual depth of The Post an intriguing, compelling thing to be involved with.â€
