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August 6, 2013 02:10 am GMT

What Did Bezos Actually Buy?

2013-08-05_14h50_50Jeff Bezos, not Amazon, is dropping $250 million in cash to purchase the venerable Washington Post. But it’s not only the paper that Bezos is picking up for his quarter billion. As part of the purchase, the Amazon founder will also become owner of a host of smaller local papers, the Washington Post website, and a printing outfit by the name of Comprint that the Post itself notes “publishes several military publications.” That’s a slurry. In short, Bezos now owns a minor newspaper empire, crowned with the Washington Post itself. But just how healthy are the assets that Bezos has purchased? Let’s take a trip through the numbers. Keep in mind that the Washington Post company is only so specific in its breakdown of revenue from its newspaper division. So, our looking glass is slightly dim. In the second quarter, the newspaper division at the Washington Post company had revenue of $138.4 million, which was essentially unchanged from the year ago quarter. This is to say that the newspaper business that Bezos just bought a large piece of isn’t in as steep a decline as you might have assumed. Print advertising revenue for the Washington Post itself was $54.5 million in the quarter, down 4% from the same quarter a year before. Again, that’s somewhat stable. The Washington Post and Slate.com, roughly, saw their online incomes rise to a combined $29.8 million, an increase of 15% in the quarter. Bezos did not buy Slate, however, so that figure is inflated compared to what the Washington Post will be able to generate on its own. That said, the Washington Post is the larger of the two, and so presumably commands a larger share of that specific revenue pool. Online advertising revenue for the newspaper division rose 25% in the second quarter. However, online classified revenue fell 7%.What does all that mean? Essentially that the online portion of the Washington Post is growing at a decent pace, even as one of its revenue streams – online classifieds – stutters. Print revenue is drifting downwards, as circulation slips. In the first half of 2013, the Washington Post saw its daily circulation decline 7.1% to 447,700. It’s difficult to tell how much money the Washington Post loses, if any. The larger and now all-but -former newspaper division lost $49.3 million in the first two quarters of 2013. However, of that loss, $39.7 million was

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