Bernstein Has ‘High Hopes’ About Bezos’s Purchase of Washington Post
Bernstein Has ‘High Hopes’ About Bezos’s Purchase of Washington Post
Bernstein, who left the Post in 1976, weighed in on the purchase, via an emailed statement to the Journal:
On a very personal level, there is obviously a lot of sentiment at this moment—appropriate sadness, for sure. Jeff Bezos in his statement to the Post’s employees, was eloquent about the principles of The Washington Post and the Graham family, and what their stewardship of the paper has meant, for the city and the country.
I have high hopes that today’s announcement will represent a great moment in the history of a great institution: recognition that a new kind of entrepreneurship and leadership, fashioned in the age of the new technology, is needed to lead not just The Post, but perhaps the news business itself, in combining the best of enduring journalistic values with all the potential of the digital era –including a profit model that will finance a renaissance of the kind of reporting that is essential for Washington, for American journalism, and for the world.
Jeff Bezos seems to me exactly the kind of inventive and innovative choice needed to bring about a recommitment to great journalism on the scale many of us have been hoping for—while employing all the applicable tools and best sensibilities of a new era and the old. The Washington Post is the ideal place for it to happen.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/08/05/carl-bernstein-speaks-out-on-jeff-bezoss-purchase-of-washington-post/