Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos explains why print newspapers are like horses - “a luxury item”
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO and recent acquirer of The Washington Post, has commented on what he sees as the future of the print newspaper.
In an interview with Today’s Kate Snow, he said that it could take decades, but “printed newspapers on actual paper maybe a luxury item. Sort of like people still have horses but it's not their primary way of commuting to the office.”
Bezos, who paid $250m for the publication, used the same analogy in 2008 when he spoke of printed books, an industry in turmoil since the arrival of Amazon’s Kindle and other e-readers.
“We’re not going to keep riding our horse to work just because we love our horse,” he said.
On that subject, Bezos commented on the new line of Kindle Fire tablets.
“This is our new top of the line, $379 this is the Kindle Fire hdx 8.9 inch. It comes with a brand new feature we call mayday, the mayday button and it's on screen tech support, like mayday, mayday, and a tech support person will appear on your screen and can draw arrows to show you what to do.”
The interview then turned to the supermarket industry, where Amazon’s Grocery service, which launched this year, is making its presence felt with same or next-day delivery of fresh produce, meat and seafood as well as DVDs and electronics.
On the impact he expects it to have, he simply said: “We try to make the best service we can. Something that we hope customers will love and then customers choose.”