Billionaire Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought himself a new toy on Monday: the 136-year-old newspaper The Washington Post, which he acquired for $250 million from the Washington Post Company. The announcement blindsided the media world, where seemingly no one knew the U.S. capital’s flagship paper was for sale.
Bezos says he will keep the Post separate from Amazon and will not run day-to-day operations at the paper.
But Bezos did tell employees in a letter that there will be "changes" coming to the newspaper.
I hope none of those "changes" come to Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet blog.
The Washington Post/Kaplan test prep owners seemingly left her alone to cover education issues as she saw fit.
Bezos does not have a good reputation for being hands-off at Amazon and Amazon does not have a reputation for being a good place to work.
In fact, Amazon has a reputation as a nightmarish workplace.
In addition, Bezos is a charter school proponent/ed deformer.
We'll have to see how these two things play out now that Bezos owns the Post.
Other than Strauss the Post has been pretty much ed deform all the way, though some of their people over time began to see through the crap. Can it become more of a vehicle for ed deform under Bezos?
ReplyDeleteBill Turque was pretty good. And Jay Matthews has done some very good pieces on Rhee and cheating. Matthews is less a reflexive deformer these days, questioning more of the reformer orthodoxy. But Strauss's blog is a treasure. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
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