Every two weeks, Jeff Bezos holds an hour-long conference call with executives at the Washington Post. Twice a year, the managers fly to Seattle for day-long strategy sessions with the Amazon.com Inc founder. And every so often, they find a reader complaint in their inbox forwarded without comment from Jeff@amazon.com.
More than two years after he bought the Post from the Graham family for $250 million, Bezos has shaped its digital transformation in ways big and small. His behind-the-scene influence has yielded a milestone: The newspaper has surpassed the New York Times in unique Web visitors two months running.
After Bezos acquired the Post - as an individual buyer and not as part of e-commerce giant Amazon - he said he had no formula for rescuing the declining newspaper industry, and promised an era of experimentation.
Bezos didn't respond to a request for an interview.
Post executives say the newspaper's digital growth - from about 26 million unique visitors in August 2013 to about 72 million in November 2015 - is the result of several initiatives. Most notably, it has widened its focus on national and international coverage and added 70 employees to the newsroom, including about 50 reporters and editors, lifting the headcount to about 700.
The digital gains can also be attributed to its relationship with Amazon and Bezos himself. While he hasn't expressed opinions about the Post's journalism and has only visited the newsroom a few times, Bezos has been hands-on with its technology and instrumental in making it a more data-driven company, said Shailesh Prakash, the Post's chief information officer.
"He's got his fingerprints in a lot of things," Prakash said. "I send him links to try. He's curious. He asks questions."
In September, the newspaper said that Amazon Prime subscribers can get online access to the national edition free for six months, with an option to continue subscribing at 60 per cent off. Late last year, the Post introduced an app that comes preinstalled on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets - a project Bezos was deeply involved with, Prakash said.
The Post has hired some engineers from Amazon, and its data scientists talk regularly with their Amazon counterparts, getting tips on how to recommend stories better based on Amazon's approach to recommending products to consumers, Prakash said.
Frozen pensions
Not all decisions have been popular. Under Bezos, the Post has frozen pensions for some current employees. Freddy Kunkle, a co-chair of the Post unit of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said the pension was already fully-funded and called the decision "very shocking."
"There was no reason to do that," Kunkle said. "It was just macho-capitalism."
Some Post reporters have felt more pressure to ensure their work is generating high levels of Web traffic, Kunkle said.
Kris Coratti, a Post spokeswoman, said journalists at the paper aren't measured by how much traffic their stories generate. She declined to comment on the pension decision.
And while the Post's online traffic has almost tripled under Bezos, its print circulation, like many other newspapers, has continued to decline. As of the end of September, daily print circulation, excluding Sundays, is down down 18 per cent to 340,381 since Bezos took over, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. As a private company, the Post doesn't disclose revenue, profit or digital subscribers publicly, and Post executives declined to comment on those figures.
More than two years after he bought the Post from the Graham family for $250 million, Bezos has shaped its digital transformation in ways big and small. His behind-the-scene influence has yielded a milestone: The newspaper has surpassed the New York Times in unique Web visitors two months running.
After Bezos acquired the Post - as an individual buyer and not as part of e-commerce giant Amazon - he said he had no formula for rescuing the declining newspaper industry, and promised an era of experimentation.
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"I didn't know anything about the newspaper business," Bezos said last year at a media conference. "But I did know something about the internet. That, combined with the financial runway that I can provide, is the reason why I bought the Post."
Bezos didn't respond to a request for an interview.
Post executives say the newspaper's digital growth - from about 26 million unique visitors in August 2013 to about 72 million in November 2015 - is the result of several initiatives. Most notably, it has widened its focus on national and international coverage and added 70 employees to the newsroom, including about 50 reporters and editors, lifting the headcount to about 700.
The digital gains can also be attributed to its relationship with Amazon and Bezos himself. While he hasn't expressed opinions about the Post's journalism and has only visited the newsroom a few times, Bezos has been hands-on with its technology and instrumental in making it a more data-driven company, said Shailesh Prakash, the Post's chief information officer.
"He's got his fingerprints in a lot of things," Prakash said. "I send him links to try. He's curious. He asks questions."
In September, the newspaper said that Amazon Prime subscribers can get online access to the national edition free for six months, with an option to continue subscribing at 60 per cent off. Late last year, the Post introduced an app that comes preinstalled on Amazon Kindle Fire tablets - a project Bezos was deeply involved with, Prakash said.
The Post has hired some engineers from Amazon, and its data scientists talk regularly with their Amazon counterparts, getting tips on how to recommend stories better based on Amazon's approach to recommending products to consumers, Prakash said.
Frozen pensions
Not all decisions have been popular. Under Bezos, the Post has frozen pensions for some current employees. Freddy Kunkle, a co-chair of the Post unit of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said the pension was already fully-funded and called the decision "very shocking."
"There was no reason to do that," Kunkle said. "It was just macho-capitalism."
Some Post reporters have felt more pressure to ensure their work is generating high levels of Web traffic, Kunkle said.
Kris Coratti, a Post spokeswoman, said journalists at the paper aren't measured by how much traffic their stories generate. She declined to comment on the pension decision.
And while the Post's online traffic has almost tripled under Bezos, its print circulation, like many other newspapers, has continued to decline. As of the end of September, daily print circulation, excluding Sundays, is down down 18 per cent to 340,381 since Bezos took over, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. As a private company, the Post doesn't disclose revenue, profit or digital subscribers publicly, and Post executives declined to comment on those figures.