Warren Buffett may have sagely advice on investment in any number of fields, but one area he says he won’t touch these days is the newspaper industry. ‘The Oracle of Omaha’ made these remarks at the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. shareholder meeting last weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal online.
Though his Berkshire Hathway still owns Omaha-based Sun Newspapers and the Buffalo News, the world’s top money manager views the future of the newspaper industry dismally, says the journal. ‘For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price,” the world’s second richest man was quoted as saying. ‘They (newspapers) have the possibility of going to just unending losses,” said Buffet, who has long considered himself to be a newspaper man.
As long as newspapers were essential to readers, the journal quoted him as saying, they were essential to advertisers. But now news is available in many other venues.Referring to the Washington Post Company in which Berkshire has a significant investment, Buffet said ‘the company has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold on to it, but its newspaper business is in trouble,” according to the journal.
