Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 07, 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE B8 B 8 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2013 BUSINESS winnipegfreepress. com ".... the Winnipeg Free Press made clear they're not in the business of news delivery but in the business of the shaping and sharing of ideas..." " The secret to the success of the Winnipeg Free Press News Caf�? Chats and a great club sandwich" 237 McDermot Avenue | 204.697.7069 email: wfpnewscafe@ gmail. com BOOK YOUR SPECIAL EVENT TODAY Allen Adamson, Forbes Magazine Tim Curry, Harvard University What they are saying about the Winnipeg Free Press News Caf� Curr rd S AN FRANCISCO - Jeff Bezos has already transformed one traditional print business - books - into a digital one. The experience provides a blueprint for how the billionaire technology executive is now poised to overhaul newspapers following his $ 250- million acquisition of the Washington Post . Since Bezos founded Amazon. com Inc. in 1995, he has forced the publishing industry to embrace e- books and digital reading devices. He has also made the Seattle- based company a leader in online advertising and collecting consumer data over the web. Those strategies have helped vault Amazon into the world's largest e- commerce provider with a market capitalization of $ 138 billion. Bezos, 49, will bring that background to bear as he plunges into the newspaper industry with his deal Monday to buy the Post . The Graham family, which had owned the newspaper since 1933, decided to sell amid a steep decline in print advertising and as audiences shifted to reading news online. " It's clear Bezos has a very deep and rich history in publishing," said Dan Kurnos, an analyst at Benchmark Co. In a letter Monday to Post employees, Bezos laid out the challenges ahead for newspapers, saying the " Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business." Bezos, who is buying the Post as an individual and unaffiliated with Amazon, added " we will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment." For Bezos, experimentation is nothing new. Over the years, the chief executive officer has pushed Amazon into everything from streaming video to delivering groceries. Bezos has also used his personal fortune - his net worth stands at $ 27.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index - to invest prolifically outside Amazon through his investment fund, Bezos Expeditions. The fund has backed young companies such as Twitter, taxi service Uber Technologies, the 3D printing company MakerBot Industries and robot firm Rethink Robotics. " He invests in things where information technology can disrupt existing models," said Rodney Brooks, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor behind Rethink Robotics. Chief among Bezos' experiments that have paid off is how Amazon has pushed the publishing industry toward a digital business model. Amazon began selling e- books in 2007 and unveiled the Kindle e- reading device that same year. By 2011, Amazon said its books for Kindle readers surpassed its print sales. Many e- books now sell for prices close to those of print ones, a lesson the newspaper industry would do well to heed. The Kindle version of A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin sells for $ 9.99 on Amazon. com, compared with $ 13.36 for the paperback. Another book by Martin, A Feast for Crows , sells for more on the Kindle - $ 9.99, versus $ 6.58 for the print version. Amazon provides other strategies to Bezos for his move to newspapers. As print publications search for a way to stem ad- revenue declines, Amazon has increased online ad sales, which are estimated to rise 40 per cent to about $ 835 million in 2013 from the year prior, according to Emarketer Inc. Amazon also has a trove of consumer data, from reading and shopping habits to credit card information. The company was a pioneer in targeting products to customers based on previous purchases - techniques that could benefit the newspaper industry. - Bloomberg News Probing the Post's potential By Danielle Kucera, Sara Forden and Brad Stone NEW YORK - When it comes to the Washington Post , if you are not thinking about the Kindle, you are not thinking like Jeff Bezos. With the Kindle, Amazon has an exclusive delivery mechanism for content, sold exclusively by it. It has the only wireless network that doesn't require customers to go through an extortionate telecom contract. Not even Apple or Google have that. Kindle's 3G is free, which means Bezos can use that network to reach you. Or rather, Amazon can use it to reach you. Amazon didn't buy the Post ; Bezos the private investor did. The Washington Post gives Bezos a news- generation operation - and now he should hand that news- generation operation over to Amazon. Think of the possibilities! The Post could show up as your browser start page; it can show up in the " special offers" that accompany the discounted Kindle. It can show up on Amazon product pages, alongside e- book libraries, you name it. But wait! Is the Washington Post so universally interesting to merit such prominent placement? Well, maybe not. Parse Bezos' words: " The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long- reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news- gathering costs... Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about - government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports - and working backwards from there." Bezos tips his hand here. The Post isn't known for its coverage of restaurant openings or scout troops. Yet Bezos seems to think the Post might return to its previous experiments in hyperlocal news. One way this would be possible is if the news is personalized. And this is where the new Post could combine elements of Amazon and Facebook. Let us hypothesize. If you are a Kindle owner, chances are Amazon already knows far more about you than Facebook, because it knows what you buy. That's the real information gold. Facebook has clumsily been trying to get at your purchase history for years with browserspying gimmicks like Beacon. But Amazon doesn't need to violate your privacy. It knows all about you. Your customer record tells Amazon where you live, what you buy, what you want to buy and a great deal more that it can infer from that information. Currently, it uses those data to make product recommendations - sensible enough. But news stories tailored to your demographic and purchase history could be far more captivating than a simple product recommendation. The news stories wouldn't have to be infomercials or puff pieces. If you've been reading Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice , maybe reviews of his upcoming Bleeding Edge will start showing up on your Kindle. If you buy diapers, maybe articles on child- rearing will show up. But these articles, puff pieces or not, will often mention products and brands, and those can be conveniently hyperlinked to Amazon product pages. Then there's the local angle. The existing Post team doesn't have the resources to cover local events around the country. So the Post banner will be extended to cover many more reporters, perhaps becoming a franchise. The Huffington Post is probably a reasonable model for what Bezos has in mind. In effect, the Post can cease to be a newspaper by and for national elites and instead become a more amorphous entity that caters to all stripes of people on an individual basis. The existing Post team will form the backbone of national news coverage, but they will in no way be the core of the Post , because there will no longer be a core. - Slate By David Auerbach Will Bezos deliver a personalized paper? EVAN VUCCI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A passerby views the front page of the Washington Post on Tuesday, a day after it was announced Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos bought the paper for $ 250 million. B_ 08_ Aug- 07- 13_ FP_ 01. indd B8 8/ 6/ 13 9: 10: 58 PM ;