alt Hacker NewsMy impression was that the point of buying the Washington Post or Twitter was to have some sort of control over the media environment, to the benefit of the owner.
If Bezos can't get $100M of losses worth from the Washington Post by other means, well, he's not using it very well.
However since he switched from the "Democracy dies in darkness" ethos to the "ah fuck it bring on the darkness, I own all the torches" ethos, he eliminated the possibility of him getting benefit from owning and running an elite institution in the information ecosystem.
It's been really funny to see a lot of tech execs fail to understand power, and its sources, when outside of their tiny section of the economy. Peter Thiel might actually understand a lot more, but Thiel seems to be the only one capable of doing anything except losing their power in an oligarchy.
Few if any people but mr Bezos have an idea of why he bought it. It could have been a precocious whim before he found his new spark in life --maybe he calculated it would benefit him in his other business and it didn't pan out. Who knows? Whatever the case, running a newspaper is not likely to exceed profits of other ventures he could plough his money into. Newspapers are kind of like horseracing it mostly loses money but gives you prestige in some circles; however, stables also close down.