Billionaire eBay Founder: I Lost The Washington Post Bid To Jeff Bezos So I'm Starting A Company With Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian reporter who first wrote about Edward Snowden's NSA leaks, is creating a media startup with billionaire eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar.

Omidyar has written a blog post explaining why he's interested in creating a digital publication, and how he and Greenwald teamed up.

First, Omidyar was interested in buying The Washington Post. Ultimately, Jeff Bezos beat his bid with a $250 million buyout. But Omidyar was still interested in owning a media company, so he shifted his thinking toward building a publication from scratch.

"I explored purchasing The Washington Post over the summer," Omidyar writes. "That process got me thinking about what kind of social impact could be created if a similar investment was made in something entirely new, built from the ground up."

Omidyar was impressed by Greenwald's reporting and reached out to him. The concept came together from there.

"As part of my learning process, I recently reached out to Glenn Greenwald to find out what journalists like him need to do their jobs well," Omidyar writes. "As it turns out, he and his colleagues Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, were already on a path to create an online space to support independent journalists. We had a lot of overlap in terms of our ideas, and decided to join forces."