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Comment by webwanderings | Hacker News Reader

As much as I was in awe of WaPo's tablet app (on Amazon's Fire), I despise their website on the public Internet ever since they have started the paywall flags. Neither NYT, nor WaPo are going to solve the world's publishing business model on the Internet. The author here makes a lot of good points. And someone please tell me exactly why Bezo wrote his letter on Medium and not anywhere else?

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Bezos likely wrote his letter on Medium to neither attach it to his ownership of WaPo (which could be viewed as some sort of conflict of interest), nor to give it to a competitor in the news media space.

if the owner of a newspaper decides what it publishes, that newspaper is no longer considered to have "editorial freedom". This is a very important thing to journalists.

I can totally understand why it's less hassle all round for Bezos to publish in Medium, or the NYT, or any other publication than the one he owns.

If the "owners" of a newspaper don't have final authority about what it publishes, they aren't the real owners/publishers in the first place; they just provide funding to it, and perhaps own its branding. It's understandable that journalists like "editorial freedom", because it's a de-facto property right. Who wouldn't like that sort of thing?

That's the curious thing: the owner does have final authority, but if they choose to exert it, they lose what they own (as the character of the publication changes).

Like the King in the Little Prince, their authority is absolute, but only if they are reasonable :)

Having been witness to an entire newsroom resigning because the owner told them what to publish, I can definitely say that it's more than a "like".

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