Uh, oh, this has got to make a lot of Virginia journalists nervous: Warren Buffett, whose BH Media Group owns daily newspapers in Richmond, Roanoke, Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Danville, among other media properties, has reiterated his conviction that there is no long-term future for most newspapers.
“It is very difficult to see — with a lack of success in terms of important dollars rising from digital — it’s difficult to see how the print product survives over time,” said Buffett during a Q&A session during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting today, as reported by The Wrap.
“No one except the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and now probably the Washington Post has come up with a digital product that really in any significant way will replace the revenue that is being lost as print newspapers lose both circulation and advertising,” he said.
Adding insult to injury, he noted, “The economic significance to Berkshire is almost negligible.” But, he added, “the significance to society I think actually is enormous.”
Even before Buffett purchased the Virginia newspapers, the enterprises were treated as cash cows — milked for profitability. The now-defunct Media General focused mainly on controlling costs, not growing revenue. Investing in the newspapers would have been throwing money away. I resented the cost cutting when I was publisher of Virginia Business magazine, thinking it short sighted, but in retrospect it was probably the right thing to do. Other than the three national brands noted by Buffett, which have the brand power to generate big subscription revenues, no U.S. daily newspaper anywhere has figured out a viable long-term strategy.
I expect Buffett to continue milking his Virginia newspapers as long as he can, prolonging the inevitable by cutting costs to match declining revenues. Inevitably, reporting staffs and news holes will continue to shrink until there’s nothing left.
Who, then, will report the news? Who, then, will hold Virginia’s political class accountable?
One model is to raise money, build an endowment, and support journalism as a nonprofit enterprise. If you can find the funds, good luck with that. Cross your fingers and hope your benefactors don’t have a partisan or ideological agenda. Another model may be hyper-local, county and courthouse reporting — we’ll see how that works out. In the meantime, I have done some thinking about a sustainable business model for an online publication (like Bacon’s Rebellion) for covering the statehouse. If there are any journalists out there looking for a longer-term future than Warren Buffett can offer, I’d like to chat. Contact me at jabacon[at]baconsrebellion.com.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.