Jeff Bezos makes his mark on Washington Post with new app

Washington

IN recent months, The Washington Post has been worried about reducing "cognitive overhead". The phrase, borrowed from its new owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, refers to the number of decisions or actions readers must make before getting what they want.

The principle was a driving force behind Amazon's one-click buying system. And it is one of the guiding ideas for a new app introduced on Thursday that will deliver The Post to some Amazon Kindle tablet owners free. It is the first formal collaboration between the two companies since Mr Bezos bought The Post for US$250 million last year.

The new app, with pre-loaded articles, pictures and advertisements, was designed in close collaboration with Mr Bezos, said Shailesh Prakash, The Post's head of technology. "We talked to him constantly," Mr Prakash said, describing feedback Mr Bezos gave to developers. "He's our most active beta tester."

Post executives said in interviews on Wednesday that the app represented the most tangible sign yet that the company's culture was melding with that of its new owner. Mr Bezos' ideas and preoccupations have quietly helped shape the newspaper, they said, and empowered its technology employees.

"Through a lot of conversations with Jeff, we've sort of absorbed some of this stuff by osmosis," said Martin Baron, the paper's editor. "We now have an opportunity to ask him how things have worked at Amazon, for example. And he has a consumer obsession."

They added that Mr Bezos had made it clear that The Post's broad strategy should shift toward expanding its national and international audience - in direct contrast to its previous shift to local news.

While Post executives emphasised that they still valued coverage of local events, Mr Baron said that many of his recent hires had been national reporters, with the Kindle app in mind. A team of 16 people will rewrite headlines and articles to make them punchier, with the intention of drawing a broader audience.

The Post's ties to Amazon and Mr Bezos are evident in its offices. Kindle Fire tablets sit alongside iPads, and Mr Prakash and his team, and the newspaper's executives, use phrases like "Day 1", an Amazon idea that each day should be treated as if it were the company's first.

New products are complete, Mr Bezos has told Post staff members, when they start loving them. Executives are guided by Mr Bezos to "focus on what you can control". The Amazon leader's preference for a culture of secrecy meant that the new app was carefully guarded, with work done under an internal code name.

The app, which was designed to reduce the profusion of news content on the Web into something as streamlined as a print publication, will be automatically added to certain Kindle Fire tablets as part of a software update. It will feature two editions each day, at 5am and 5pm, times at which the company believes it will reach the most readers.

The app will be free for Kindle Fire owners for six months, and will then cost US$1 for the next six months. NYT