A consistent problem I've seen with e-books and streaming video is lack of live content, in particular breaking & current news. Apple provides some live sports, and just added SkyNews, but that's all third-party encapsulated content limited to AppleTV. Google scrapes the Web for news, but just gives pointers to content instead of packaging it. Bezos isn't buying a newspaper, he's buying a content-gathering service - it might not be big, but the core infrastructure is in place to get the content and curate it without negotiating with a fiercely protective third party.
We've been observing the demise of news outlets. The demise continues so long as the owners fight to retain total control of their distribution to eyeballs; having given up, WP has finally given total control to someone who does control distribution of content to a whole lotta readers & viewers. Expect the rebranding of WP as Amazon News, and watch it explode onto the news scene giving CNN, Fox, etc a desperate run for their money.
Amazon per se may not be interested in WaPo per se under current conditions, but repackaged into a suitable form it may be. Bezos could make a tidy sum selling an Internet-future-ready news service to Amazon.
That's a potential nightmare of self-dealing that I don't think is Bezos (or Amazon's) style. You'd have to get some third party to come in and validate the transaction price as fair, etc. Amazon's done a number of transactions where it chose to maintain or transform the target as a separate entity (think Zappos, IMDb), so if he thought there was long term interest he would have just had Amazon buy it.
Almost as easily as I can imagine Kindle Newspapers being improved by this, I can imagine Prime Instant Streaming having a live news channel. I'd be down for it.
We've been observing the demise of news outlets. The demise continues so long as the owners fight to retain total control of their distribution to eyeballs; having given up, WP has finally given total control to someone who does control distribution of content to a whole lotta readers & viewers. Expect the rebranding of WP as Amazon News, and watch it explode onto the news scene giving CNN, Fox, etc a desperate run for their money.