How Washington Post could end up like Bloomberg or Reuters

Rakesh Agrawal writes for Quartz about how the sale of The Washington Post to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos could result in the daily paper ending up more like financial news services Bloomberg and Reuters.

Agrawal writes, “Bloomberg and Reuters treat quality journalism as a marketing expense to promote where they actually make real money: selling data to professional money managers.

“When the television networks launched newscasts, they were meant to be a public service, provided in exchange for the public airwaves that the networks were given free use of. Making a profit wasn’t the goal. In recent years, network news has become viewed as a profit center. As a result, costs have been cut, bureaus closed and more airtime given to sensational topics.

“Conversely, Bloomberg and Reuters treat their news divisions as marketing for their professional services. Bloomberg couldn’t care less about making money from news; it’s about promoting the Bloomberg terminal.

“They’re willing to spend to make that happen. A friend of mine who went from working at a network news operation to Bloomberg said it was like going from being Orphan Annie to living at Daddy Warbucks’ house.”

Read more here.