Metanoodle: Outmanoeuvered by blogs, newspapers for sale cheap.

Bezos of Amazon

Today, the Washington Post was bought by the owner of Amazon. (Lost 87% of its value in ten years)

The Boston Globe was resold for $70 million the other day though NYT had bought it for almost a billion.

The LA Times is for sale.

Newsweek was sold for one dollar.

The Chicago Tribune is on offer.

A Mexican billionaire put 1/4 billion into the New York Times.
Conrad Black sold The National Post to Izzy Asper in 2000. (pre-blog era). And so it goes.

Biased news is the norm

but so is change. The big guys finish their day in the sun.

Readers at Blogging Tories probably feel the media give little voice to their priorities.

That will change when it has to, when the money runs out for Plan A on the left.

Re Washington Post sale: The newspaper, not the whole congolomerate was sold and it was sold without pension liabilities for past employees. Bezos bought as a private individual, not as owner of Amazon. The only hopeful thing in his announcement is that news starts with what's important to readers, not what is important to the reporters and editors.
Added: Uh Oh!

"The Post is now Bezos’ latest political tool in a crony capitalist effort to work with the Obama administration. How else to explain President Obama puzzling decision last week to roll out his corporate tax plan at an Amazon.com fulfillment center?"

Another update for National Review Online: "Fish don't know they're wet": "They just see liberalism as the natural state of thinking people...And that’s why, despite Bezos’s business acumen, the Post will likely continue down the path of clueless, parochial liberalism, and keep hemorrhaging readers".

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Self-publishing makes owning a press cheap and creates competition for the old media.