Former Washington Post face checker Glenn Kessler spoke with Fox News Digital about the paper's "absentee owner" Jeff Bezos and the challenges the news outlet faces.

The first time I spoke to Jeff Bezos, he had founded Amazon as an online bookstore and made himself available to all kinds of journalists — a "political genius," said The New York Times Magazine, a "brilliant, charming, hyper, and misleadingly goofy mastermind." In 1999, having blown past the naysayers who scoffed at the strange notion of online retailing, the 35-year-old businessman was named Time’s Person of the Year.

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, as one of the world’s richest men, Bezos spent $250 million of his personal fortune to buy the Washington Post from Katharine Graham’s family.

And now he should fold his cards and sell it.

It’s a different era for the industry and a very different Bezos, one who is comfortable slashing a third of the paper’s staff.

EX-WASHINGTON POST FACT CHECKER HITS ‘ABSENTEE OWNER’ BEZOS, TELLS HIM TO COMMIT TO SAVING PAPER OR SELL IT

Having initially declared that "the duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners," Bezos, whose Blue Origin company has federal contracts, is actively trying to repair his once-strained relationship with President Donald Trump. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

While management has made more than its share of mistakes, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Bezos has destroyed what was once one of America’s great newspapers.

I bring my personal history to the table. I spent 29 years at the Post, working for Bob Woodward’s investigative SWAT team, as Justice Department reporter, as New York bureau chief, and eventually as media reporter and columnist.

In the 1980s and ’90s, when newspapers really mattered, the Post, while lacking the resources of The New York Times, delivered scoops with an all-star team, from politics (David Broder and Dan Balz) to sports (Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon and Tom Boswell) to the metro desk (Woodward and Bernstein). And there was the freewheeling Style section of Sally Quinn and many other narrative writers.

Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, looks out into the crowd during The........

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