Mediagazer: Why the Sale of the Washington Post Seems So Significant (James Fallows/The Atlantic Online)

8:10 PM ET, August 5, 2013

Top News:

Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos — The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family's stewardship of one of America's leading news organizations after four generations.

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James Fallows / The Atlantic Online:

Why the Sale of the Washington Post Seems So Significant — A moment that will define an era's upheaval in journalism. — In the photo above we see Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee walking out of the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington after their historic win in the legal battle over publishing the Pentagon Papers.

Discussion: GigaOM, Columbia Journalism Review, BuzzMachine, FishbowlDC, @pkafka, @kvox, @sdkstl, @dangillmor, @jaredbkeller, @sophblack, @bobstep, @jamesfallows and @dkthomp

Washington Post:

Jeff Bezos on Post purchase — To the employees of The Washington Post: — You'll have heard the news, and many of you will greet it with a degree of apprehension. When a single family owns a company for many decades, and when that family acts for all those decades in good faith …

Katharine Weymouth / Washington Post:

Katharine Weymouth letter to Post readers — Dear readers: — This is a day that my family and I never expected to come. The Washington Post Company is selling the newspaper it has owned and nurtured for eight decades. — In addition to The Washington Post, the company …

Discussion: TechCrunch, The Wrap, Business Insider, @earljwilkinson, @aloraibi, @samsifton and New York Times

Washington Post:

Letter from Donald Graham on sale of The Post — I have a most surprising announcement. Our company is making it public right now that we have sold The Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. To be clear, the buyer is not Amazon, but a company owned by Jeff personally.

Discussion: Business Insider, @melissabell, @anneapplebaum and @jayrosen_nyu

New York Times:

The Last Temptation of Tina Brown — On Nov. 12, 2010, Tina Brown gathered the staff of her Web site The Daily Beast in the third-floor conference room at its Chelsea offices with its commanding views of the Hudson. Brimming with the fervor she has brought to all her endeavors …

Sara Morrison / The Wrap:

Tina Brown to Howard Kurtz: 'Didn't I Fire You for Serial Inaccuracy?' — Howard Kurtz and Tina Brown took to Twitter to share their innermost hostilities toward one another on Monday, with the Daily Beast editor responding to Kurtz's criticism with the remark: “Didn't I fire you for serial inaccuracy?”

Discussion: Mediaite, FishbowlNY, @atxjj, The Huffington Post, @janicebmin, TVNewser and The Drum

Alex Ben Block / Hollywood Reporter:

Time Warner Cable: We'll End Blackout If We Can Offer CBS A La Carte — In a letter, TWC CEO Glenn Britt asks to resume negotiations immediately, and wants the network to stop blocking CBS.com content from its broadband customers. — Time Warner Cable's CEO Glenn Britt on Monday sent …

Discussion: Deadline.com, The Wrap, Bloomberg, @sherman4949, Wall Street Journal, @edmundlee, @wjcarter, @samgustin and @peterlauria3

Bloomberg:
Time Warner's blackout of CBS enters third day

Discussion: TVNewser, The Wrap, CNET, Radio & Television …, Broadcasting & Cable, Variety, AdAge and Hillicon Valley

Bill Carter / New York Times:
Viewers Wait for CBS and Time Warner to Make Up

Discussion: @jbflint, Forbes, The Huffington Post, TIME, FishbowlNY, GigaOM, The Week, TVSpy, @brianstelter and New York Times

Beth Healy / The Boston Globe:

3 groups say they topped Henry's bid for Globe — Three of the groups that lost out in the bidding for The Boston Globe say their offers were higher than Red Sox owner John W. Henry's winning $70 million bid — prompting them to question the New York Times Co.'s sales process.

Discussion: Gawker, Boston Globe, Poynter and The Huffington Post

Tim McLaughlin / Reuters: From Boston hero to goat, billionaire John Henry takes on Globe challenge

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

For Twitter, Free Speech Is a High-Wire Act — As Micro-Blogging Site Expands Globally, It Gets Flak From Many Sides — Twitter Inc.'s growing ambitions are making it harder to carry the Internet's free-speech banner. — Chief Executive Dick Costolo promotes Twitter as a protector …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Sky News, @digiphile, @marciahofmann, Kirk LaPointe's …, BelfastTelegraph.co.uk, eMedia Vitals and Guardian

David Carr / New York Times:

Parodying Cable News With a Talk About Race — On Tuesday night on MSNBC's “All In,” Chris Hayes had a very direct conversation about race with the Gawker writer Cord Jefferson. Prompted by a news report of a group of young people in Huntington Beach, Calif., who looted and vandalized property …

Discussion: @katrinanation, @mattdpearce, @the_fjp and @alexisgoldstein

Josh Sternberg / Digiday:

Native Ads: The Digg Way — For most publishers entering the world of sponsored content the concern is keeping editorial separated from the creation of the advertising content. — Not so much at Digg, the social-news platform bought and revived by digital media holding company Betaworks.

Discussion: @bmorrissey and eMedia Vitals

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Al Jazeera America sets own course — Weeks ahead of its debut, Al Jazeera America is doing things the old-fashioned way. — AJAM, as it's referred to by staff, is investing heavily in investigative journalism. It is opening bureaus in cities across the country.

Discussion: @jaredbkeller, @mattgertz and @jayrosen_nyu

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Digital usage overtaking all legacy media — Americans this year are likely to spend as many hours consuming content on digital devices as the combined amount of time that they devote to gazing at TV and paging through print, according to eMarketer, a research-aggregation service.

Discussion: @carlzimmer and WGBH News