Business-Musings-From-Woodstock-for-Capitalists: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/107029/Business-Musings-From-Woodstock-for-Capitalists)

Mr. Buffett on Newspapers

Mr. Buffett has long held himself out as a newspaper man. As a child, one of his first jobs was delivering newspapers. An Omaha newspaper Berkshire owned, Sun Newspapers, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 based in part on a tip Mr. Buffett provided. One of Berkshire's biggest investments in the 1970s was the Buffalo News, which it still owns.

But his view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price," he said. "They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."

As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers, he said. But news is now available in many other venues, he said.

Berkshire has a substantial investment in Washington Post Co. He said the company has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold on to it, but its newspaper business is in trouble.

Mr. Munger called newspapers' woes "a national tragedy....These monopoly daily newspapers have been an important sinew to our civilization, they kept government more honest than they would otherwise be."

A Washington Post Co. representative couldn't be reached for comment.

I don't think Mr. Buffet's comments would be a suprise to anyone at The Daily Oklahoman. Who in their right mind would BUY a newspaper company? Sam Zell?

On the flipside, if you own a debt free newspaper in a single paper market, and have investments and ownership holdings in multiple businesses around the country, how does this proclamation have anything to do with you?

I believe Malibu has mentioned this many times - the OPUBCO group is as forward thinking as any newspaper in the country both with their print product and with the advances in their multiple digital endeavors. I'm sure they'll work things out for the future and last I heard, there were still well over 200,000 paid subscribers who pay for what they do.

You're very, very correct Centerback! For what it's worth, OPUBCO has been recognized throughout the industry as being on the cutting edge in what it's doing online. If I felt the situation were hopeless, I'd be gone by now.
Now, if we had been bought by Belo a few years ago, this might be a very different situation. Things aren't great in the newspaper world. But guess what? They're just as bad with local tv news. But they're not telling you that.