Three years after Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Publish for $250mn, the Amazon billionaire made one other Washington acquisition that was arguably simply as important to the Georgetown social set: a mansion within the capital’s upscale Kalorama Heights neighbourhood for $23mn.
His 2016 buy of a former textile museum that may change into town’s largest personal residence was celebrated regionally as an indication the tech titan and his then-wife MacKenzie have been shifting their lives from Seattle — the place the couple had a love/hate relationship with metropolis grandees — to “the opposite Washington”.
Bezos did little to discourage the hypothesis. Simply as he set out on a $12mn renovation of the home in 2018, Amazon introduced it was constructing a second headquarters within the Washington suburb of Crystal Metropolis. Then it grew to become identified that he needed to accumulate town’s fabled Nationwide Soccer League workforce, which might quickly change its identify from the Redskins to the Commanders.
The capital embraced its new arrival. “What he’s going to do is revive the legacy of Kay Graham and her nice socialising,” Jean Case, a Bezos buddy and spouse of AOL co-founder Steve Case, predicted that yr in a reference to the late, legendary Publish proprietor and Georgetown hostess.
When Bezos threw his first huge celebration on the Kalorama property in January 2020, the company included Mitt Romney and Ivanka Trump and the Publish, the place digital subscriptions and staffing have been surging, seemed like a uncommon information business development story. Quickly afterwards, its proprietor started constructing his $10bn Bezos Earth Fund philanthropy organisation in Washington too.
However over the previous 18 months, a number of of Bezos’s huge Washington bets have been derailed, blocked or overtaken by occasions — culminating within the upheaval on the Publish, the place the billionaire’s handpicked chief govt, Sir Will Lewis, is going through a newsroom revolt triggered by his radical makes an attempt to stem losses on the information organisation, which final yr hit $77mn.
Robert Winnett, the British former colleague Lewis picked as editor, withdrew from the job final week, after tales appeared in rival shops and the Publish itself questioning each males’s ethics in earlier roles.
The sequence of setbacks has raised a query within the nation’s capital: is Bezos nonetheless as enamoured with Washington — and the Publish — as he was when he acquired the struggling newspaper a decade in the past?
Individuals who have spoken to Bezos insist he’s nonetheless dedicated to the Publish for the long run, a sentiment he reiterated in a memo to high editors final week wherein he signalled he would “lead this nice establishment into the longer term”.
“In my expertise, Jeff is a troublesome man and I don’t suppose he cares that a lot what folks suppose,” mentioned an individual who has labored intently with him up to now. “Will he tolerate dropping $100mn yearly? Completely not. Is he prepared to offer Will an opportunity to enact his technique? I’m assured he’ll, barring new unfavourable revelations.”
Nonetheless, a assessment of Bezos’s current actions tells a barely totally different story in regards to the priorities of the tech billionaire and his new accomplice, TV persona Lauren Sánchez, one wherein different hubs are vying with Washington for his or her enterprise and social pursuits.
Flight logs supplied by JetSpy for 3 personal jets related to Bezos don’t seize the entire couple’s current journeys to Washington, the place they hosted an awards gala in March and attended a state dinner on the White Home in April. However they recommend that town has ranked beneath Seattle, California, Florida and Texas on their checklist of locations since early 2021.
When the Publish was celebrating its three Pulitzer Prizes in Could, the couple have been attending the glittering Met Gala in Manhattan. Bezos arrived there following a equally celebrity-heavy Method One Grand Prix celebration in Miami. And, as final week’s management disaster convulsed the Publish, they have been photographed on vacation in Mykonos.
Days after Lewis shocked Publish journalists this month by saying the resignation of editor Sally Buzbee, Bezos paid $87mn for a 3rd waterfront property in Miami, a ten,000 sq ft mansion on two acres with seven bedrooms, a pool and boat dock.
His transfer to south Florida adopted an announcement by Amazon final yr that it was halting development on its Crystal Metropolis headquarters. Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s vice-president for worldwide financial improvement, insisted that “our long-term dedication stays unchanged” however acknowledged there was no replace on when development would resume.
Amazon had promised to create 25,000 jobs on the web site, which sits subsequent to Washington’s Reagan Nationwide Airport and simply throughout the Potomac river from the capital’s monuments and museums.
However current knowledge from Virginia’s state improvement authority exhibits that the variety of Amazon staff within the area really fell from 8,430 final yr to 7,791. The Publish was the primary to report the drop. Amazon, which like different huge tech teams has grappled with how a lot post-pandemic workplace house it nonetheless wants, instructed the Monetary Occasions that roughly 8,000 staff have been assigned to the HQ2 web site and greater than 1,000 roles have been open.
Of all Bezos’s thwarted Washington initiatives, nonetheless, the one which will hit closest to house is his failed pursuit of the Commanders. A life-long NFL fan, Bezos had repeatedly signalled his want to enter the elite membership of soccer workforce house owners.
Bezos went as far as to place an possession group along with music mogul Jay-Z to accumulate the Commanders, however was outbid by fellow billionaire Josh Harris, co-founder of the personal fairness agency Apollo.
On the time, some US media shops reported that the workforce’s then proprietor, Dan Snyder, blocked Bezos’s bid due to his possession of the Publish — which just about single-handedly pressured Snyder to promote, after it revealed the workforce allegedly tolerated pervasive sexual harassment and worker abuse.
Folks briefed on the method, nonetheless, insist Bezos was merely outbid by Harris, who acquired the workforce for $6bn. “I don’t suppose Snyder would haven’t offered to them if Jeff got here in with a bid of $7bn,” mentioned an individual concerned within the course of.
There are few indicators that Bezos is souring on the Publish, the unique pillar of his Washington empire, or Lewis, the chief he selected to remodel it.
When the group looked for a brand new chief govt and writer final yr, Bezos relied closely on longtime buddy and Amazon board member Patty Stonesifer, who served because the Publish’s interim chief, to sift by means of the candidates. The Publish employed the Sucherman advisory agency to assist with the method and did a “thorough background test” on Lewis and his previous, in accordance with folks briefed on the matter. However Bezos himself is reported to have made the ultimate resolution to rent Lewis over a meal with the British media govt.
Folks aware of the matter say Bezos and Lewis have had — not less than till now — a great relationship, and that Bezos has endorsed Lewis’s turnaround plan for the Publish, which has misplaced practically half of its viewers since 2020.
Bezos had moved in “lockstep” with the strikes made by Lewis up to now, in accordance with an individual aware of their relationship, who mentioned that the Amazon founder accepted his new CEO’s choices earlier than they have been introduced. This included the plan for a “three-newsroom” construction, they added, which led to Buzbee’s departure.
However Bezos has been unemotional in separating from executives he has cooled on up to now. In 2014, when he determined to fireside Katharine Weymouth as writer of the Publish, he moved shortly. Lower than a yr after shopping for the newspaper, he ousted the heiress to the Graham household that had managed the paper for eight many years in a single assembly that lasted lower than 5 minutes.
“I used to be struck by the abrupt and icy dismissal,” Martin Baron, govt editor on the time, wrote in a current e-book. Weymouth later mentioned: “I simply was anticipating to not less than end this yr”.
Extra reporting by Daniel Thomas and James Fontanella-Khan
