Jonathan Franzen does not heart Jeff Bezos, but in a Guardian article, French digital-media maven Fréderic Filloux offers the Amazon honcho advice for the business side of the Washington Post. The opening:

“The questions stated above might not fall into Jeff Bezos’s areas of sharpest expertise. But there is no shortage of smart people within the Washington Post— at least a core group eager to seize their new owner’s ‘keep experimenting’ motto and run with it.

What can he do? For today, let’s focus on editorial products.

#1. The printed newspaper. Should the Washington Post dump its print product altogether? The short answer is no. At least not yet and not completely. Scores of digital zealots, usually with a razor-thin media culture, will push for the ultimate sacrifice. But in every market — Washington, London, Paris — there still exists a solid base of highly solvent readers that will pay a premium for the print product. This very group carries two precious features for newspaper economics: One, they are willing to pay almost any price to have their precious paper delivered every day. For a proof of that statement, see how quality papers repeatedly hiked prices in recent years, $2 or €2 is no longer a psychological threshold. Hefty street prices helped many to offset the decline of advertising revenues. Keeping the printing presses running offers a second advantage, the ads themselves: They gave lost ground, but the remaining print ads still bring 10 or 15 times more money per reader than digital versions — which is, let’s be honest, a complete economic failure of digital news products.

How long will it last? I’d say around five years.”