Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Buy Washington Post, Pay Cash

File under: Be careful what you wish for.

On the heels of what now seems like an oddly timed New York Times profile of the Washington Post‘s fourth-generation publisher Katharine Weymouth comes news that Jeff Bezos, Grand Moff at Seattle mega e-tailer Amazon, is dropping $250 million in cash to purchase the paper:

Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.

Bezos’ Amazon has been particularly adept at finding inefficiencies in legacy-bound systems (e.g., book publishing and distribution, retailing, warehousing) and then disrupting the heck out of them. It stands to reason that if anyone can find a solution to print journalism’s woes, it’s Bezos. But be forewarned: If Bezos’ strategy in the book biz is any example, the establishment might not like the solutions he comes up with.