May 25, 2012, 10:12 AM —
Buffett just bought 63 more newspapers. Is he locking up a dying market, or will paywalls revive papers?
Berkshire Hathaway Inc., run by Buffett, spent $142 million buying newspapers in "towns and cities with a strong sense of community," reports Bloomberg. Circulation slips in cities where dailies compete, a paper no longer acts as the primary source of local news, or the market doesn't have a sense of identity, says Buffett, and he avoids those papers.
Buffett didn't say whether he planned to institute paywalls for his new papers, just that they were working out the "blend of digital and print that will attract both the audience and the revenue we need." Media General, the seller, evidently hasn't figured out those details since their stock has dropped more than 90 percent since the end of 2003. Buffett says free news "is an unsustainable model and certain of our papers are already making progress in moving to something that makes more sense."
Buying bones
Buffett is going down just like all the lame stream media! People are finding ways to get the actual truthful news from other sources instead of newspapers.
garry sills on bloomberg.com
News is ripe for disruption. News was a better business when it was harder to find out what was happening in the world because of difficulty in transporting information and media. That's all gone now.
btipling on news.ycombinator.com
Don't even bother with printed versions. People only read about 20% of their content anyway then they go to landfill.
Spike on theage.com.au
News has always been free. The newspaper was a package deal, largely paid for by advertising, and consumers only forked over a little bit of money for the convenience.
rickmb on news.ycombinator.com
The Net net
Buffet has said time and time again that he does not understand the Internet.
