Buffett on a newspaper buying spree

Investor Warren Buffett, undaunted by the downsizing of the newspaper industry, has been busy snatching up more community papers. What’s more, it’s clear that he has a plan for them—and that plan is digital. The Berkshire Hathaway billionaire recently snapped up the Bryan-College Station Eagle in Texas, a tiny community paper with a circulation of 20,000. That follows his investment in chains like Lee Enterprises and his $142 million purchase of Media General and its 63 newspapers, and he’s talked about buying even more. In a memo to the editors and publishers of all of Berkshire’s daily newspapers, Buffett wrote: “We will favor towns and cities with a strong sense of community, comparable to the 26 in which we will soon operate. If a citizenry cares little about its community, it will eventually care little about its newspaper.” His move comes as the New Orleans Times-Picayune and other newspapers are reducing publication to three days a week. But thrice-weekly publishing isn’t what Buffett has in mind for his new stable of papers. As he put it to The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz, “This three-day-a-week stuff really kills you. You want people who look at you every day … Once people get used to online, I don’t think they come back.”

Buffett has made it clear that he wants to focus on online content and that he’s a fan of pay walls. In an interview with CNBC earlier in the year, he commented: “Newspapers have been giving away their product at the same time they are selling it, and that is not a great model. You’re competing with yourself … You shouldn’t be giving away a product you’re trying to sell. That’s key to the future of the newspaper.” But despite Buffett’s track record, not everyone is applauding his strategy. Reuters’ Jack Shafer said Buffett’s spending spree doesn’t necessarily nullify the curse of liquidation that’s beset the newspaper industry. “It still won’t be a happy ending to a century (and then some) of newspaper glory,” he wrote. “The papers that escape liquidation will still be watered down.” GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram agreed. “One of the things that makes it hard to cheer for Buffett (is that he hasn’t) advanced a plausible strategy for making the transition from print to digital,” he explained. “But the bottom line is that without some kind of strategy … an online newspaper becomes simply another voice among thousands of other digital information sources.”

• Warren Buffett buys Texas newspaper (Omaha World-Herald)

• Warren Buffett to buy small Texas daily, will own 88 newspapers (Poynter)

• The great newspaper liquidation (Reuters)

• Don’t just liquidate your newspapers — reinvent them (GigaOm)

• Buffett’s Berkshire buys small Texas newspaper (Associated Press)

• Warren Buffett adds Texas daily to newspaper stable (Reuters)

• Why Warren Buffett Still Buys Newspapers as the Industry Sinks (The Daily Beast)

• Who’ll sell more papers: Warren Buffett or the Internet? (Poynter)

• What happens when a newspaper is just another digital voice? (GigaOm)

• Did Warren Buffett Just Bash the Washington Post’s Strategy? (Forbes)

• Buffett: I’ll be ‘hands-off’ with newspapers (Omaha World-Herald)