Read All About It: Washington Post Sold to Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

By Mary Ann Barton

The Washington Post announced Monday it will be sold to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, for $250 million. 

Publisher and CEO Katharine Weymouth, a granddaughter of Katharine Graham, made the announcement to Washington Post employees at 4:30 p.m. The sale will end the reign of the Graham family as owners of the fabled paper, which has reported some of the biggest stories in journalism — from Watergate to the Pentagon Papers.

The news that the historic Washington newspaper is being sold sent shockwaves through the Twitterverse Monday afternoon.

• Andrew Beaujon @abeaujon22s: "The values of The Post do not need changing," Bezos says in letter to employees
• Jeff Jarvis @jeffjarvis1m: The obvious response to a Bezos Post will be the presumption of pay walls. But what he *really* knows is personal service. 

“Every member of my family started out with the same emotion—shock—in even thinking about” selling The Post, said Donald Graham, the Post Co.’s chief executive, in an interview Monday with the Post's own media reporter. “But when the idea of a transaction with Jeff Bezos came up, it altered my feelings.”

The paper reported that "with extraordinary secrecy, Graham hired the investment firm Allen & Co. to shop the paper, company executives said. Allen’s representatives spoke with a half-dozen potential suitors before the Post Co.’s board settled on Bezos, 49, a legendary tech innovator who has never operated a newspaper."