Jeff branches out

Jeff Bezos is the guy who founded Amazon. He just started a new hobby -- from The Washington Post:

Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos
The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family�s stewardship of one of America�s leading news organizations after four generations.

Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world�s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.

Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.

The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington�s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation�s politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, whose reporters have broken such stories as the Watergate scandals and, in June, disclosures about the National Security Agency�s surveillance program.

The article is fairly long (five pages) and has a nice (and favorable) biography of Bezos. This will be interesting to watch.