Jeff Bezos, Washington Post owner, takes a stand against clickbait

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has been relatively quiet about the Washington Post, the newspaper he personally bought in 2013.

That is not to say his impact has not been felt. In the two and a half years that followed, the paper has embraced digital publishing with open arms.

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It has been rewarded with an upswing in traffic that has brought its numbers top those of its biggest rival -- the New York Times.

How the Post has done so has been the source of some critique. There have been accusations of clickbait tactics and "flooding the zone," or writing too many stories about a few topics. 

In October 2015, the paper put out 13,245 articles on Twitter, according to Newswhip data. That's roughly double the amount from November 2013. 

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Even the New York Times has recently borne criticism of clickbait tactics from public editor Margaret Sullivan, who slammed the paper's decision to pursue some lighter coverage instead of throwing more resources to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Bezos addressed the topic of clickbait in a town hall held at the Post's headquarters on Monday.

But first, he mentioned his favorite topic: thinking in the shower. 

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Bezos has previously referred to how much time he spends in the shower thinking about Amazon's business, which suggests that perhaps Bezos's showers are getting longer. 

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The CEO, known for his long-term thinking in relation to business, hit on the tension that every media outlet is experiencing, as the struggle for more traffic -- and more revenue -- grows amid an uncertain relationship with Facebook. 

Publishers have complained that Facebook's ever-changing algorithm is, at various time, choking off vital views to their pieces. Facebook's traffic to publishers dropped 32% from January through November of last year. 

Bezos stressed that the Post should do some stories even if they weren't popular. 

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He also hinted that the future of the Post may be in some kind of subscriptions model, which could involve trying to appeal to as many people as possible.

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The entire industry is under pressure, however, and Bezos suggested that there were many things that the Washington Post and other newspapers just hadn't figured out yet. 

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Amid the deep thoughts about journalism, however, Bezos couldn't resist taking a shot at his nemesis, Donald Trump. 

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