The Washington Post Co. announced Monday that it will change its name to Graham Holdings Company, acknowledging the Oct. 1 sale of the company’s flagship newspaper and several other publishing businesses to Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos.
The name change will take effect Nov. 29, the company said in a news release. The company’s NYSE new ticker symbol will be GHC, replacing WPO.
Post Co. Chief Executive Donald E. Graham announced the sale of The Washington Post and other assets to Nash Holdings, Bezos’s private investment company, last August. The $250 million purchase price included The Post, its printing plant in Springfield, Va., the Spanish-language El Tiempo newspaper, the free-distribution Express daily newspaper, the suburban Washington Gazette weeklies and 23 acres of undeveloped land in Charles County, Md.
The Graham family, which had controlled the newspaper for eight decades, retained ownership of the Kaplan education company; the television stations WDIV-Detroit (NBC), KPRC-Houston (NBC), WPLG-Miami (ABC), WKMG-Orlando (CBS), KSAT-San Antonio (ABC) and WJXT-Jacksonville (independent); Cable ONE, a Phoenix-based company that provides digital video, Internet and phone service to homes and businesses in 19 midwestern, western and southern states; the Slate Group, which includes Slate, Slate V, The Root and Foreign Policy; Social Code, a social media marketing agency; Celtic Healthcare, a provider of home health-care and hospice services; and Forney Corporation, a global supplier of products and systems that control and monitor combustion processes in electric utility and industrial applications.