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Feb. 1, 2016, 11:44 a.m.
Business Models

Jeff Bezos on The Washington Post’s digital strategy, the future of print, and sending Trump to space

The Post and Amazon owner met with the paper’s staffers in a town hall meeting this morning.

Jeff Bezos doesn’t spend much time in Washington, D.C. or at the offices of his Washington Post, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about the newspaper he bought for $250 million in 2013. He regularly meets with editors and executives by conference call and in-person in Seattle, but Bezos said he uses some more personal time to think about the paper.

Luckily for us, journalists like to live-tweet events, so Post staffers gave us a play-by-play account of Bezos’ talk.

BezosTweets

In addition to offers to Donald Trump, Bezos discussed the future of the Post’s print edition, the state of diversity in the newsroom, and the importance of turning users who visit the Post online into paying customers. Here are the highlights:

Photo by Esther Vargas used under a Creative Commons license.

POSTED     Feb. 1, 2016, 11:44 a.m.
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The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”