Three years after Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post for $250 million, the Amazon billionaire made another Washington acquisition that was arguably just as significant for the Georgetown social group: a $23 million mansion in the capital’s upscale Kalorama Heights neighborhood.
His 2016 purchase of the former textile museum, which will become the city’s largest private residence, was hailed locally as a sign that the tech titan and his then-wife MacKenzie were moving their lives on from Seattle — where the couple had a love/hate relationship with big-city glamour. — to the “second Washington.”
Bezos has done little to discourage speculation. Just as it was embarking on a $12 million home renovation in 2018, Amazon announced it was building a second headquarters in the Washington suburb of Crystal City. Then it became known that he wanted to acquire the legendary National Football League team in the city, which would soon be renamed from the Redskins to the Commanders.
The capital city welcomed its new arrival. “What she’s going to do is revive the legacy of Kay Graham and her great socializing,” Jean Case, Bezos’ friend and wife of AOL co-founder Steve Case, predicted that year, referring to the late, legendary owner of the Post and Georgetown. hostess.
When Bezos threw his first big party at the Kalorama building in January 2020, guests included Mitt Romney and Ivanka Trump, and the Post, where digital subscriptions and staff were growing, looked like a rare news growth story. Soon after, its owner began building his $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund philanthropic organization in Washington as well.
But over the past 18 months, several of Bezos’ big bets in Washington have been derailed, blocked or overturned by events — culminating in upheaval at the Post, where the billionaire’s handpicked CEO, Sir Will Lewis, is facing a newsroom revolt sparked by his radical attempts to stem the news organization’s losses, which last year they reached 77 million dollars.
Robert Winnett, the British former colleague Lewis selected as editor, pulled out of the job last week after reports in rival outlets and the Post itself questioned the ethics of both men in previous roles.
The string of setbacks has raised a question in the nation’s capital: Is Bezos still as enamored with Washington — and the Post — as he was when he acquired the struggling paper a decade ago?
People who have spoken to Bezos insist he remains committed to the Post for the long term, a sentiment he echoed last week in a note to top editors in which he indicated he would “lead this great institution into the future.”
“In my experience, Jeff is a tough guy and I don’t think he cares that much what people think,” said a person who worked closely with him in the past. “Will he tolerate losing $100 million every year? Definitely not. Is he willing to give Will a chance to implement his strategy? I’m sure it will, unless there are new negative revelations.”
Yet a review of Bezos’ recent activities tells a slightly different story about the priorities of the tech billionaire and his new partner, TV personality Lauren Sánchez, in which other centers compete with Washington for their business and social activities.
Flight logs provided by JetSpy for the three private jets linked to Bezos do not capture all of the couple’s recent trips to Washington, where they hosted an awards ceremony in March and attended a White House state dinner in April. However, they indicate that the city has ranked below Seattle, California, Florida and Texas on their list of destinations from early 2021.
As the Post celebrated its three Pulitzer Prizes in May, the couple attended the glitzy Met Gala in Manhattan. Bezos arrived there after a similarly packed Formula 1 Grand Prix party in Miami. And as the leadership crisis engulfed the Post last week, they were photographed on holiday in Mykonos.
Days after Lewis shocked Post reporters this month by announcing the resignation of editor Sally Buzbee, Bezos paid $87 million for a third Miami waterfront property, a 10,000-square-foot mansion on two acres with seven bedrooms, a pool and a boat dock.
His move to South Florida followed Amazon’s announcement last year that it was halting construction on its Crystal City headquarters. Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s vice president of global economic development, insisted that “our long-term commitment remains unchanged,” but admitted there was no update on when construction would resume.
Amazon has promised to create 25,000 jobs at the site, located next to Washington’s Reagan National Airport and just across the Potomac River from the capital’s sights and museums.
But recent data from the Virginia State Development Authority shows that Amazon’s workforce in the region actually fell from 8,430 last year to 7,791. The Post was the first to report the drop. Amazon, which like other big tech groups has been grappling with how much office space it still needs after the pandemic, told the Financial Times that around 8,000 staff had been allocated to HQ2 and more than 1,000 roles had been opened.
Of all Bezos’s failed Washington initiatives, however, his failed pursuit of commanders may hit closest to home. Bezos, a lifelong NFL fan, has repeatedly signaled his desire to join the elite club of football team owners.
Bezos went so far as to put together an ownership group with music mogul Jay-Z to acquire Commanders, but was outbid by fellow billionaire Josh Harris, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo.
At the time, some U.S. media reported that then-team owner Dan Snyder blocked Bezos’ bid because of his ownership of the Post — which almost single-handedly forced Snyder to sell after it was revealed that the team had allegedly tolerated rampant sexual harassment and abuse of employees.
People briefed on the process, however, insist that Bezos was simply outbid by Harris, who acquired the team for $6 billion. “I don’t think Snyder would have sold them if Jeff came in with a $7 billion offer,” said a person involved in the process.
There is little sign that Bezos, the original pillar of his Washington empire, or Lewis, the leader he has chosen to transform it, is budding.
When the group searched for a new chief executive and publisher last year, Bezos relied heavily on longtime friend and Amazon board member Patty Stonesifer, who served as the Post’s interim chief, to sift through candidates. The Post has hired consulting firm Sucherman to help with the process and conduct a “thorough background check” on Lewis and his past, according to people briefed on the matter. But Bezos himself reportedly made the final decision to hire Lewis at a dinner with a British media executive.
People familiar with the matter say Bezos and Lewis have had a good relationship — at least until now — and that Bezos has supported Lewis’ turnaround plan for the Post, which has lost nearly half its audience since 2020.
According to a person familiar with their relationship, Bezos is “leaning in” to Lewis’s actions so far, who said the Amazon founder approved his new CEO’s decision before it was announced. That included a plan for a “three newsroom” structure, they added, which led to Buzbee’s departure.
But Bezos was emotionless as he parted ways with executives he had cold-shouldered in the past. When he decided to fire Katharine Weymouth as Post publisher in 2014, he moved quickly. Less than a year after he bought the paper, he ousted the Graham family heiress who had controlled the paper for eight decades in a single meeting that lasted less than five minutes.
“I was struck by the sudden and icy dismissal,” wrote Martin Baron, then-executive editor, in a recent book. Weymouth later said, “I just expected to at least finish this year.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Thomas and James Fontanello-Khan