Dive Brief:
- Amazon Prime members will soon be able to read the national digital edition of the Washington Post free of charge online for six months.
- Following the initial trial period, Prime members will be able to continue their Post digital subscriptions for $3.99 per month, 60% off the regular price.
- Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for the newspaper in 2013, and has since bundled its digital content with the Kindle e-reader tablet product.
Dive Insight:
The Washington Post is aligning more closely with Amazon under Jeff Bezos’ ownership. Millions of Amazon Prime customers will soon have access the paper’s digital edition, receiving access to Post articles free of charge for the first six months of membership.
New media outlets and news organizations have been scrambling to ink deals recently. Apple News now offers The Wall Street Journal , Facebook offers articles from the New York Times, and Snapchat has partnered with ESPN, CNN, and BuzzFeed. Such deals give consumers yet another reason to visit an online platform while opening access to vast numbers of new readers for the publisher—and new readers mean a stronger advertising.
The new perk for Prime members joins a growing list of extras subscribers enjoy with their $99-a-year membership. While other membership-based shopping services have emerged in recent months at a cheaper annual rate, they have yet to match the additional services Amazon offers its Prime members.
Under Bezos’ ownership, the Post has already started to emerge as a national media outlet, with digital page views reaching 596 million in August, up 60% from the same month in 2014.
