When he purchased 63 local newspapers eight years ago, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett knew this was not going to be one of his legendary investments. “The newspaper business,” he said, “is a declining business, and we will pay a price to be in that. That is not where we will make real money.” This was more of a civic investment. “In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper,” he added. He had acquired his hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald, a year earlier.

Ultimately, however, Buffett didn’t let sentimentality interfere with his bottom line. Earlier this week, Berkshire Hathaway announced it would be selling the papers to Lee Enterprises, which owns dozens of newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and has managed Buffett’s papers for years.



The news was taken as yet another sign that the industry is doomed. But it also underscores Buffett’s catastrophic failure as a steward of some of the most important local papers in the country. Buffett was better suited than perhaps anyone to find a sustainable model for small and midsize newspapers. Instead, he did nothing.



Buffett has a long history with newspapers. A mentor to former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, Buffett purchased a 12 percent stake in that newspaper in 1974. A year later, he helped Graham beat back a strike, cementing a close relationship that would last until Graham died in 2001. Buffett would remain on the Post’s board until 2011 and retained significant stock before Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2014.



Although Buffett had purchased the Buffalo News in 1977, newspapers were largely a sideline for him until the 2012 purchase. The investment came after he had made a number of trenchant comments about the dismal state of print media. “For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price,” he told investors in 2009. “They have the possibility of nearly unending losses … I do not see anything on the horizon that sees that erosion coming to an end.”

