For people in the book world, Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine, owners of Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C., have an unusual perspective on the purchase of the Washington Post by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. As they wrote on the store's website, "each of us spent significant portions of our working lives at the newspaper--Brad as a foreign correspondent, editor and Pentagon reporter, and Lissa as a reporter and editor on the metro and sports staffs."
They say they "fervently want to believe that the Graham family's decision to sell the paper to Bezos is a smart business move that will, as supporters of the deal contend, breathe new life into the Post and enable it to prosper during the digital age. The Grahams have made clear they are counting on Bezos' deep pockets and on his reputation as a visionary and innovator to re-think the newspaper business and finance necessary changes."
Yet, they continued, "In the past two years, as stewards of another local cultural institution--Politics & Prose--we've routinely encountered a different version of Bezos. Indeed, among many independent booksellers he is perceived as a ruthless competitor bent on disrupting traditional retailers, including bookstores, without regard for the civic and commercial value that local bricks-and-mortar establishments still bring to neighborhoods around the country…
"Perhaps because those of us in the bookstore business view Bezos through the lens of frontline combatants, we have difficulty sharing Don Graham's confidence that the Amazon founder (a Washington outsider with no newspaper experience who plans to continue living in Seattle) will do the right thing and maintain the Post's high journalistic standards and deep commitment to the D.C. area. In any case, the Post purchase will certainly enhance Bezos's--and Amazon's--influence in Washington, which already is considerable. Just look at President Obama's decision last month to travel to an Amazon facility in Tennessee for a speech highlighting job creation. Or the Justice Department's recent action against Apple and major book publishers, accusing them of colluding to raise e-book prices and reduce Amazon's dominance of the e-book market."
In a nice touch, Graham and Muscatine concluded with a public offer: "Now that Bezos will be a D.C. business owner, we'd like to extend our own welcome to him. We even hope that he might find time when in town to visit Politics & Prose and be reminded of the benefits afforded by local bookstores--the joy of browsing shelves, the help provided by expert staff, the pleasures of attending author events, and above all, the shared sense of community."