Newspapers’ Last Defender Has Gone Sour, Buffett Says They Are Going Down
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
That was then and this is now -- Warren Buffett, the owner of more than 30 newspapers, has now declared that the future of newspapers is dismal.
“In the past 15 months, Berkshire Hathaway acquired 28 daily newspapers for $344 million,” reported Business Insider in a March, 2013 article. Buffett’s purchase of newspapers was the last hope that the industry was viable.
Buffett bought 32 papers in total.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBut, in an interview with Politico’s Playbook this month, Buffett said "Newspapers are going to go downhill. Most newspapers, the transition to the internet so far hasn’t worked in digital. The revenues don’t come in. There are a couple of exceptions for national newspapers — The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are in a different category. That doesn’t mean it necessarily works brilliantly for them, but they are a different business than a local newspaper."
Not great news for newspaper ownership groups when the premier investor in the United States turns sour on his own assets - publicly.
“But local newspapers continue to decline at a very significant rate. And even with the economy improving, circulation goes down, advertising goes down, and it goes down in prosperous cities, it goes down in areas that are having urban troubles, it goes down in small towns – that’s what amazes me,” said Buffett.
“A town of 10 or 20,000, where there’s no local TV station obviously, and really there’s nothing on the internet that tells you what’s going on in a town like that, but the circulation just goes down every month. And when circulation goes down, advertising is [going] to go down, and what used to be a virtuous circle turns into a vicious circle.”
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