The 8/13/13 edition of “To the Point,” hosted by Warren Olney on kcrw.com, focuses on the purchase of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. His guests are Nick Wingfield of the New York Times, John Harris of Politico, Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher, and Steven Waldman of Daily Bridge Media. Among other topics, Mr. Olney and his guests speculate about whether Mr. Bezos can find a way to make traditional news profitable again. Many interesting points were made in this discussion. Mr. Waldman of Daily Bridge Media notes that while the “tyranny of short term thinking” played a role in the inability of traditional media to adapt to the digital age, Mr. Bezos has a record of investing in innovations that pay off in the long run, and that he might bring this approach to the Washington Post. Mr. Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher disagreed with this view, arguing that it wasn’t a matter of short term thinking on the part of newspapers, but rather that they were in the path of a disruptive technology. 

I raised a few of the points that I found particularly interesting in this discussion, visit this URL to listen to the entire discussion:

http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp130813is_jeff_bezos_a_thre