LOS ANGELES

Jeff Bezos turned selling books online into a multibillion dollar business that has changed retailing forever. Many are now anxious to see if Bezos can do the same for the media industry, after the Amazon.com founder announced he is buying The Washington Post and other newspapers for $250 million.

Monday’s news of the sale to the 49-year-old pioneer of Internet commerce came as a shock to observers, many of whom thought the Graham family would never sell. It also sparked hope among the ranks of reporters beset by seemingly endless cutbacks.

Among his champions are the members of the family selling the paper, including publisher Katharine Weymouth, who promised to stay on as publisher.

As some journalists shed tears, others expressed optimism.

“Jeff Bezos seems to me exactly the kind of inventive and innovative choice needed to bring about a recommitment to great journalism,” said Carl Bernstein, whose co-reporting of the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s cemented the newspaper’s identity as a political watchdog.

But The Post, like most newspapers, has been losing readers and advertisers to the Internet while watching its value plummet. The paper has cut its newsroom staff repeatedly in recent years and closed several bureaus.

Many see Bezos, whose fortune was valued at $25 billion by Forbes magazine, as being rich enough to sustain the losses the newspaper will likely face over the next few years.

Bezos is buying the newspaper as an individual. Amazon.com Inc. is not involved.

Bezos said to Post employees in a letter distributed to the media that he’d be keeping his “day job” as Amazon CEO and a life in “the other Washington” where Amazon’s headquarters are based in Seattle.

But he made clear there would be changes, if unforeseen ones, coming.

“The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding longreliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs,” Bezos wrote. “There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”

Washington Post Co. chairman and CEO Donald Graham called Bezos a “uniquely good new owner.” He said the decision was made after years of newspaper industry challenges. The company, which will continue to own the Kaplan college and test preparation business along with six TV stations, will change its name but didn’t say what it will be.

Bezos said in a statement that he understands the Post’s “critical role” in Washington and said its values won’t change.

“The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners,” Bezos said in his letter to Post employees.