Can Warren Buffett Save the Newspapers?
May 11th, 2009 by Carlos
Newspapers are dying. Fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers and fewer and fewer advertisers are paying to have their ads in them.
Newspapers all across the country are either shutting down or going online-only.
Why? People don’t want to pay for their news anymore. They can get it all for free from the Internet, so why pay for it?
Yes, It’s Sad
For those of you that actually read newspapers as part of your daily routine, it’s kind of depressing. Even if you’re like me and you never read them, it’s still kind of depressing to think that newspapers could disappear.
Some people think Warren Buffett should step up to the plate and do something about it, which is ridiculous.
The author thinks Buffett should try to “save journalism” because he’s powerful, rich, and is also passionate about newspapers. But above it all, Warren Buffett is a businessman. He refuses to sink money into a losing cause (other than Berkshire when it was a shirt maker) and he refuses to invest in companies that he doesn’t understand.
If he were to invest his money into a project that tried to tackle the blog/newspaper/online problem, he would be stepping into an arena he is not all that familiar with. In other words, he’d be breaking one of his cardinal rules.
For What?
To save an industry that has decided it is above adapting to modern times? I don’t think so. Warren Buffett may have close ties to the Washington Post and he may have been a paperboy back in the day, but to think he owes anything to the industry is a whole is an exaggeration.
Let me be clear: I think a world with out journalists roaming the world, exposing the truth, is scary. But most of us don’t watch or read the news thinking, “Gee, let’s see what injustices journalists have uncovered from around the world so I can become a more informed citizen.” That may have been the reality back in the 1960s and 70s, but today people want to read the shocking, juicy details of famous people’s sex lives. They want to know who cheated on whom. They want drama wrapped in a “safe” story that they don’t have to think about too much.
That’s the reality. How newspapers can adapt or fit into that world is up to them. I don’t have the answer. A Time writer has some ideas.
The first comment on the Buffett article says it all: “you cry for the dead too, this does not mean that you can bring them back to life.”
Amen.
Photo by inju
