In 2013, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. That had the salutary effect of eliminating the quarterly freak-outs, when the paper would unveil sinking numbers to investors, soon followed by the inevitable bloodletting in the newsroom. More than providing financial ballast, Bezos turned the Post toward the web with a vengeance. Its online traffic doubled in three years, leapfrogging the Times. And the Post developed a content management system that it’s now leasing to other news outlets. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, this CMS could generate $100 million a year.
