Twenty years ago the New York Times bought the Boston Globe (and some satellite papers) for $1.1 bn. Now they've been sold, to the man who owns Liverpool football club, for $90m – not too far off the price Luis Suárez might attract, if on his best behaviour. Nobody tried to buy the Washington Post in 1993. It was an iconic brand, not for sale at any price. But now $250m – roughly Real Madrid's mid-season transfer budget – sees it pass into the personal control of the man who made Amazon, who can treat its mounting losses as pocket money.

Since nobody saw Jeff Bezos coming, sundry post hoc theories aired about the deal should be treated with extreme caution. But you can hear the sound of history marching.

In the beginning, newspapers were founded by families and journalists (sometimes both). Then the families came to love money more than printers' ink, and sold out to embryo chains, which cut costs, built empires and made their money on the stock markets of vaulting returns. In America a few great families, owners of the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Washington Post and New York Times, hung on. But three of those four, including the DC heirs of Kay Graham, are vanquished now.

So what is there left – in US terms? A few grisly operators (owners of caravan sites and the like) have driven the Chicago Tribune and LA Times into the ground. New York's sale of the Globe to a rich sports magnate sets a trend. The Bezos swoop on a feebler generation of Grahams raises similar possibilities.

Newspapers are cheap, like struggling football clubs. But buy them and squeeze them still drier on costs and you can make headlines yourself. Self-promotion comes easy for zillionaires. This could be vanity publishing, with an extra spoonful of public service and public clout. Imagine the parties Bezos can throw for the president. Imagine the influence – over global tax wheezes – Amazon can exert.

Then wonder what happens when time, interest or cash runs out. Digital is a world in constant oscillation. Watch Microsoft rise and plateau, AoL begin to give up on its newspaper ventures, Apple lose its sheen. Bezos, with his $25bn personal fortune and open dismissal of news on paper – in 20 years, it won't exist, he says – is being hailed as a saviour.

But remember the bigger picture. We worry about Turkish press freedoms because its papers are owned by entrepreneurs with many other fish to fry – people who'll bend when governments push. Here, on a wider screen, comes the same condition: news as a byproduct. The Guardian and the Observer followed the Snowden trail (and see rising sales). The Washington Post trod the same road, and is sold with hope but nil guarantees to a rich man who needs his favours. Call it the Bezos syndrome; watch and wait.