Washington Post, the famous American daily is being sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million. The deal was announced on Monday.
Jeff Bezos will become the sole owner of the Post and affiliated publications when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The deal also includes the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.
This deal will end eight decades of control of the Graham family over the newspaper.
The Post Company will change its name as part of the transaction, though a new name has yet to be announced.
The Post Company will maintain its ownership of media titles including Foreign Policy magazine, online magazine Slate and TheRoot.com, as well as education company Kaplan.
It will also hold onto real estate assets including the Post's headquarters in downtown Washington, as well as cable operator Cable One and the Post-Newsweek network of television stations.
Bezos, one of the world's richest men, wrote in his memo to Post employees that the paper "will need to experiment" in the years to come, adding that he was "excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."
"The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs," he wrote.
Washington Post was the newspaper that broke the story of the Watergate scandal leading to the 1974 fall of President Richard Nixon.
(with inputs from IANS)
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