Amazon has begun to move toward producing a light newspaper, or even a magazine. I think it is necessary to look at the purchase of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos within this framework.

This is a new and interesting era, one in which even Big Ben has a Twitter account. It bongs every hour and tweets another bong every half hour. Now its chimes can be heard not only in Westminister, but all around the world. You know Big Ben, the famous clock at the Palace of Westminster in London. It is like the trademark of London. It seems to have kept up with the times so as to make its chimes heard. Today everyone puts their twitter account on their resumes. After all, we are talking about 500 million users. Meanwhile, the number of Facebook accounts has exceeded 1.2 billion. This is the reality of our times, not that of technological change per se. It is about technological change starting to affect our daily lives directly. It is not that that these technologies are brand new, but that the applications that affect our daily lives are only a few years old. It appears that this is a process at the end of which the Internet and IT technologies will change the organizational form around the blue planet. I guess it is time for the media now. Let me share with you what is going on in the media industry these days.

The media is out on a limb, actually. Both in Turkey and around the world. Honestly, the position of Turkey’s media before the political power is a matter of the previous century. Not interesting at all, just vulgar and coarse. There is nothing to analyze and learn from the case in Turkey. It’s a disgrace and that’s all. The recent developments in the American media, however, are a matter of the present century. In fact, I believe we are witnessing an issue that pertains to the future. First, the New York Times sold the local Boston Globe. And then the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of the online book merchant, Amazon. Now everyone is wondering why. Let me tell you what I think.

So, what is the problem of the media? Let me start with that. The numbers tell it actually. The New York Times had bought the Boston Global two decades earlier, in 1993, for $1.1 billion. Today, it sold for $20 million. Bezos agreed to pay $250 million for the Washington Post. Why did the previous owner, Graham, agree to sell? Because the advertisement revenues were shrinking. In 2006, the advertisement revenue in America was worth $50 billion. The cake has shrunk, with a current value of $20 billion following the crisis. Bad news for the media industry. On top of it, new media are spreading at full speed. The conventional media must introduce a series of changes and make bulk investments in order to be innovative. It is a tall order.

Bezos, on the other hand, founded the online book store Amazon, and started off selling books. He first developed a huge logistics network for book delivery. Later, when electronic books became popular, eliminating the need for paper and ink to transfer words to readers, he launched the Kindle, an electronic book reader. Today we all own one. My favorite activity during visits to America used to be to spend time in bookstores. Not anymore. There are scarcely any bookstore chains in America that have survived. Only independent ones, and they only have new releases. The last time I was in a bookstore in Washington I asked a clerk if they had James Stewart’s 1992 book Den of Thieves. The book is a non-fiction classic about insider trading scandals in America, which surfaced again this year. They did not have the book since it was expensive to keep it in inventories. Right after I left the store I downloaded an electronic copy to my Kindle from Amazon. I started reading it right away at the Starbucks on the corner. Bezos has wiped out bookstores. So I can’t say I like him.

On the other hand, Amazon recently has started to produce content, too. It has started publishing the Kindle Single series of long-form journals and short books. For evaluations on world developments, for example. It’s like back when we had long plays and extended plays, remember? For instance, I liked the single about Bo Xilai, China’s central committee member who stood trial and was convicted of corruption. Finally in July, Amazon announced that it would start publishing an interview series via Kindle Singles. Amazon already has started to run like a daily paper, or a journal. I think we must view the purchase of the Washington Post by Bezos from this perspective: it is a means to transfer content from old to new media.

I wish you a happy bayram.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 09.08.2013