Taking care of Bezos

By now you've heard that the gazillionaire owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, bought the WaPo. (Moment of silence for the untimely end of Kaplan test prep daily jokes.) This of course will be a topic of endless fascination among the insider media types for the duration of the summer.

Henry Blodget at Business Insider has already been living life under a Bezos investment at his publication and tells us it's not a bad thing. He offers up his own speculation on why Bezos decided to make the purchase.

Over at The Week, Peter Weber surveys the internets and collects the five best reasons why Bezos bought the WaPo.

For myself, damned if I know why he did it or what's going to happen to it now. The vindicative bitch in me would love to see some of the smug pundits have to deal with the reality of unemployment they so blithely dismiss when it happens to other people. Rather doubt that's going to happen, at least to those who deserve a pink slip the most.

As for Jeff's reasons, I suspect he did it a) because he could and b) because he who controls the information delivery to the masses can control public opinion. He's a uber-rich guy with an agenda and so far, I'm told, had only a small footprint inside the Beltway bubble. This buy enlarged that with a speed and weight that couldn't be achieved so expeditiously any other way.

What he intends to do with it remains to be seen but I don't have high hopes that he's going to change anything for the better. Would be thrilled to be wrong though. The optimist in me lives in hope.