A great article and thoughts on the future of the editorial industry. As you, I believe Mr Buffet is an investor luminary and he´ll be basically extracting the last drop of value in each of the newspapers he has bought from Media General. And I might add, that as an investor, there´s nothing wrong with that course of action.

My family has been in the newspaper business for 125 years. I started working at the family paper at 11 years old, and worked through every department of the paper until settling in the newsroom. My final job with the family venture was as Editor of a NYC weekly newspaper, which I thought of, designed, launched and managed for 2 years, until I discovered the Internet in 1993.

I was invited to give a conference to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) meeting in Caracas, Venezuela in March of 1995, and told all the newspaper owners gathered at the meeting that there was this new thing called the Internet, and that I believed that newsprint had its days counted. Most, if not all of them, laughed.

In October of last year, at the IAPA´s Annual meeting in Lima, Perú, I again repeated the same prediction, except this time, they weren´t laughing when I showed an infographic entitled Newspaper Extintion Timeline, developed by an aussie futurist called Ross Dawson, which you can find here: http://www.futureexploration.net/Newspaper_Extinction_Timeline.pdf

For the past two years I´ve been working with media companies in Latin America trying to figure out how to transform their businesses and maybe turn back the clock on that extintion timeline.

Even in the less developed Latin American markets, in which the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) assured last year that the industry was still growing in circulation and advertising, the downturn is now starting to be felt, and some of the publishers that I´m working with have started to see a drop in ad revenues and print audiences for the first time in decades.

So, right now, only the Asian and African markets are growth markets for print newspapers. And the reasons are obvious, they are:

1. Audiences have changed. Check out the Pew Research Center´s study on the State of the Media and see the shift. The audience of newspapers is gray and old, and is not getting any younger. Today´s audience is multi-device and multimedia.

2. News reporting is no longer a monopoly. Journalists and editors had the news market cornered 20 years ago. Citizen journalism and crowdsourcing rule in today´s connected world.

3. The news cycle changed. Newspapers worked on a 24 hour news cycle, the Internet works on a second-by-second news cycle.

4. Advertisers have changed. As you well state, newspapers are no longer the only game in town, but not only that, today results matter, and newsprint might be good for branding, but it doesn´t cut it in comparison with all the engagement-based tools available in the digital world today.

5. The value of content has changed. A story in a print newspaper had a lifecycle of minutes. The lifecycle of a story on the web will continue as long as the network exists.

The first thing I tell my publishers is: what would you do if you were starting an editorial business from scratch today? Publishers need to rethink their business and become entrepreneurial companies that look at the market from a new perspective. Otherwise they will go into bankruptcy, and it will happen pretty fast, because advertisers will keep shifting their budgets to digital platforms and the extremely heavy costs structures that newspapers need in order to run their print businesses will bring them down faster than they all think.

In order to transform and resurface, the newspaper industry needs to take the news and the paper out if it!

Guess what Berkshire-Hathaway was when he first bought it. A textile company in the Northeast. The very picture of a declining company in a declining industry. But the price was right, he made a lot of money off his investment, and even though textiles moved south and then overseas, his company is legendary.

I know for certain that he knows what Craigslist is. They have discussed it ad nauseum at both WaPO and Gannett shareholder meetings. He sees a way to make some money, I assure you. So I agree that the correct question is: What does he know that the rest of us don’t?

2) Depending on which stats reports you read for which area, you will find that less than 80% of the North American population are counted as being “Internet Users” – http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

What these stats fail to tell you is what exactly that 80% are doing when they’re online. My 75 year old grandmother would check her email, look up some geneology and then get the hell out and if anything she didn’t recognize came up, I got I phone call…. BUT…. she would be counted as an “Internet User” – but ask her where she would get her “news”…. newspaper, TV and radio.

So this raises 2 points. The first being – who the hell holds the right to say that the roughly 20% of the North American people who are not “Internet Users” should no longer have the right to read their news in print? I mean let’s face it, we’re talking 20% of almost 350 million people… that’s almost 70 million people! But worse than that… out of the world population of 6.9 billion people, less than 33% of them are “Internet Users” – that means roughly 4.6 billion people shouldn’t be allowed to expect their news in print?

Secondly, just because someone is declared an “Internet User” doesn’t mean that they do everything online or that they are always plugged in. Statistics have always been easily manipulated to paint whatever picture a person wants it to paint (even my numbers above – because let’s face it, what are the percentages of those non-Internet-Users who are illiterate and can’t read a newspaper or who are living in third-world countries and don’t even have access to a newspaper or the Internet…) – but let’s be responsible and look that this stuff from more than one set of eyes. Furthermore, try talking to a number of “Internet Users” and ask them whether they get their news online or offline?

Another set of stats I’ve seen declares that 25% of Americans get their news online! And it’s declared as if that should be an impressive number! Seriously?

3) Having said this – am I a bleeding heart, ‘save the print’ person? No, I’m not. I am deeply entrenched in a project that will massively change the digital landscape for media and advertising.

Two of the things that this project will achieve (among many others) include: 1) it will bring an organization level to news and content never before seen publicly online and it will make embracing news online a source of enjoyment and pleasure for EVERYONE – even the non-Internet-Users of today. 2) it will redefine the print publication, free them of their struggles and allow them to stabilze.

Will print make a rebound? I highly doubt it.

Will it ever see the likes of its Golden Era again? I highly doubt it.

Can it be stabilized and once again turn a profit? In some cases, absolutely it can!

Will more print focused newsrooms continue to die? In some cases, absolutely they will.

It is a rare ability to see the world through multiple eyes – but that’s what is needed to get through the current state of media and the print industry. Tunnel vision in any direction will be fatal.

Community news reigns supreme, and we still are making big bucks. Why? We have smaller staffs who are more willing to work. Say for instance, Tampa has five reporters who each write two stories a week. Our five reporters write two stories a day … well no wonder Tampa only had a profit of like $800,000 last year. It’s all about the big bucks baby. Internet=not quite a cash cow like you wish it would be. They’ll figure it out, but it’s not today.

My favorite quote: “He’s a billionaire for a reason.” Warren Buffett’s not a dumb man. He may be sentimental, but do not mistake that for stupidity.

Editorial control? Ha! I’m pretty sure Daddy Bucks doesn’t give a crap what we publish. He just wants our profits $$$$$$$ He also owns GEICO. Would you be able to tell by anything they do? Also owns Fruit of the Loom! Maybe he will conspire with them too to put Obama’s face on every pair of underpants they sell!

Why not give this nostalgic print model the final rest it deserves and go digital; training those who still like the feel of paper pulp in their hands a new toy that will whisk them into the “global village” where others are living? Why not invest in making the Internet and their newspapers available and digitally attractive to folks who have a print addiction? How about selling current newspaper customers E-Readers that are sponsored by advertisers who can pay these newspapers to sponsor the new toy and end the print newspaper? The revenue newspapers are seeking is there in plain sight. Just sell the captive audience on a new way to get its local news and hold onto the brand loyalty they have always enjoyed.