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Warren Buffett’s Newspaper Purchase

Last week, Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, purchased two dozen small newspapers and their related online properties from Media General, a conglomerate with holdings mainly concentrated in the southeast Unites States. After finalizing the deal, Buffett issued a memo on his view of the acquisition. (The text of the memo is here.)

Buffett is famously the greatest investor alive, and almost as famous for plain-spoken observations about the market, so you’d assume his first public memo about Media General would offer insight into the current state of the newspaper business. The actual text, however, merely makes it clear that Buffett doesn’t understand that business.

He makes much of drops in print readership, but circulation has not been strongly correlated with revenue for two decades now. Print circulation began its decline during the Reagan administration, while newspaper profits increased through the middle of the last decade, reaching their highest point just before the current collapse.

He alludes to the relationship between readers and newspapers half a dozen times in a thousand-word memo; in that same space, he never once uses the words ‘advertising’ or ‘advertisers’. Reading the letter, you’d never know that papers make most of their money from companies, not citizens, and have done for the better part of two centuries. It is disruptive competition for ad dollars, not changing reader engagement, that has sent the industry into a tailspin.

Without understanding what’s in it for advertisers, an exhortation to “reign supreme in matters of local importance” has no more strategic value than a halftime cheer; if all it took to run a profitable paper was good local coverage, newspapers would not be in this bind in the first place. But good local coverage isn’t enough, because ordinary citizens don’t pay for news. What we paid for, when we used to buy the paper, was a bundle of news and sports and coupons and job listings, printed together and delivered to our doorstep.

People are still happy to pay for reproduction and delivery, of course. We just pay our ISPs now. And we still care about news and sports and coupons and job listings — we just get them from different places, and, critically, money that goes to Groupon or Hot Jobs [correction] no longer subsidizes the newsroom. Ad dollars lost to competing content creators can be fought for; ad dollars that no longer subsidize content at all are never coming back.

Buffett asks his new employees to provide “your best thinking as we work out the blend of digital and print,” but the eventual blend of digital and print is going to be digital. Small town residents of the sort Media General serves tend to adopt technology late, but the future eventually arrives, even in Opelika, Alabama.

These mistakes don’t mean Berkshire Hathaway will lose money on the deal, of course; given the fire-sale price, every one of those papers could close in the next ten years and Buffett’s firm would still make money on interest paid and the underlying real estate. These mistakes do mean that Buffett’s sepia-toned view of the newspaper business, with its references to linotype machines and newspaper-throwing contests, is badly off the mark. For the readers, old habits are not the same as current loyalty. For the advertisers, previous convenience does not translate into planned commitment. For the papers, historical longevity does not imply future resilience.

So here’s a prediction: long before the Berkshire Hathaway warrants expire, many of the papers Buffett has invested in will have reduced both print days and their newsroom staff, and journalists will be writing the “What went wrong with the Media General deal?” story.

The answer to that question is already apparent: Buffett wants to talk like a philanthropist and an investor at the same time, not understanding that the public good and the bottom line have diverged. A newspaper used to be both a profitable business and a public service, but this was just an accident of the competitive (or rather uncompetitive) media landscape. His commonsense approach to saving papers won’t work, because there is no longer any commonsense business model for a former monopoly that is still seeing its revenues erode faster than its costs.

* * *

Correction: In an earlier version, I had used Career Builder as an example, but as Ben Welsh points out in the comments, CB is jointly owned by newspaper companies. I substituted Hot Jobs as an example of a service that removes revenues from content subsidy entirely.

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This entry was posted on May 29, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

34 Responses to “Warren Buffett’s Newspaper Purchase”

  1. spacer Rafael Bonnelly Says:
    June 26, 2012 at 7:49 am

    Dear Mr Sharky,

    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: 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!

  2. The hard truth: Newspaper monopolies are gone forever — Tech News and Analysis Says:
    June 15, 2012 at 11:45 am

    [...] if Niles and Fox and media theorist Clay Shirky are right, Buffett may find himself confronting the exact same challenges that Advance and Postmedia are: namely, how does a former monopoly survive in a market — for [...]

  3. spacer Bob Lucore Says:
    June 6, 2012 at 4:58 pm

    Just to be clear. Buffet is the major shareholder–not me. That’s for sure.

  4. spacer Bob Lucore Says:
    June 6, 2012 at 4:57 pm

    So many of you speak as if Warren had never been in the newspaper business before. As a major shareholder in the Washington Post company and as someone who has made tons of money at various times by owning shares in Gannett, I submit that he knows a great deal. And he also knows a lot about the competition.

    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?

  5. What happens when a newspaper is just another digital voice? — Tech News and Analysis Says:
    June 5, 2012 at 5:46 pm

    [...] have with their newspapers (although Clay Shirky predicts Buffett himself will likely have to do the same thing soon). As Buffett put it to Howard Kurtz: This three-day-a-week stuff really kills you. You want people [...]

  6. spacer Tanya Thibodeau (@tanyathib) Says:
    June 3, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    1) Don’t kid yourself commenters… Clay is right, Warren will unquestionably make money on this deal one way or another. If you don’t understand business and investing, I would suggest that you don’t worry about it – what does it matter?

    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” – 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.

  7. spacer Brad Gilbert Says:
    June 2, 2012 at 10:12 am

    I believe that he purposely did not talk about advertising. He wanted the journalists to feel like he gets them. Talking about advertising, would be a sure way to “turn off” the intended recipients of the letter.

  8. Around the Web: The Laws of Acadynamics, Please Don’t Learn to Code and more « Random Information Says:
    June 1, 2012 at 7:01 am

    [...] Warren Buffett’s Newspaper Purchase [...]

  9. spacer Three cheers for Warren! Says:
    May 31, 2012 at 5:39 pm

    I work at an MG paper that’s about to move over to Buffett’s control. We cheered the day we heard the news … briefly considered doing a champagne run to celebrate.

    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!

  10. spacer Kyle F. Reinson Says:
    May 31, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    Excellent topic, but: my question is one of readership. Who reads the print editions of newspapers? Clay Shirky’s points here are buffeted (sorry) by the fundamental generational changes of the digital age. Money is being squandered by investors to reach aging audiences with the same questionable and ephemeral production of print. These newspapers and their sales departments keep beating the same drum they were 20 years ago and charging small businesses too much money for advertising vehicles that are limited in terms of their future and in terms of their effectiveness. It is almost like investing in The Pony Express.

    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.

  11. spacer Tim Says:
    May 31, 2012 at 8:12 am

    JLAnderson, with respect, the horse has bolted.
    I don’t need to come to Clay’s defense, but I would submit to you that he does in fact know what he is talking about, and that perhaps you are too close to the trees to see the forest.

    You say “That’s not saying that there won’t come a point in time when print is discontinued, that the package isn’t delivered primarily by some other, as-yet-unconceived method, but print has a great deal of life left in it.”

    The method has been conceived already.
    It is digital distribution of news, whether by text, images, video or podcasts.
    The digital distribution is to web browsers, mobile phones, tablets, and maybe to TV, STB’s and other screens that that find a place in our lives.
    The user typically pays something for access (ISP, phone company, cable etc.), and a lot of the news has ads on it, usually delivered by Doubleclick or some other giant ad network rather than by the ‘newspaper’ itself.

    “LOCAL advertisers … who want to reach a LOCAL audience, a LOCAL prospective customer. There simply is no more cost-effective way to accomplish that job.”

    Two problems with that statement:
    1. Google is going after the ‘local market’ with great self-service tools that give local advertisers access to local audiences, and only pay for performance.
    And the great thing about the Google tools is that I can reach my local audience, even when they are reading national news on Washington Post or wherever because my ads can target the audience, not necessarily the website.
    2. You’re assuming that advertisers are the key to newspaper profitability. They are not. Newspapers were traditionally carried by classified – Jobs, cars, property, and general classifieds. That has now gone to Craigslist, EBay, Gumtree and others and it’s not coming back to newspapers. (Clay refers to this in his post, but perhaps doesn’t spell it out clearly).

    Don’t confuse news with newsprint – the old bundle has been blown apart, and ‘local’ does not somehow change the way it works today.

  12. spacer Andrew Says:
    May 31, 2012 at 4:42 am

    Controlling pieces of media, as with fox news, is a far cheaper means of lobbying than paying bribes (er, i mean, campaign contributions) to politicians.

  13. spacer Chui Tey Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 9:40 pm

    Clay, I’d just read past the WB’s public good commentary. At the end of the day, he remains a shrewd business man.

    While it is true history is not on the side of newspapers in general, newspapers as a form factor will always occupy a niche.

    I find myself tire of reading off a tablet, and the newspaper offers a different tactile experience. For one, it is less distracting than reading off a website. I’d argue that people will always seek out an alternative form-factor or method to experience their content. Newspapers, magazines, even inserts.

    Secondly, local news is defensible because it requires constant attention and work. There is no instagram-style audiences which can be supported on a platform of 12 employees.

    Thirdly, while sales of products inexorably heads towards the internet, there are all manners of local services that finds its audience locally. (There is a question of course whether Facebook will be more efficient at reaching local audience or not), but I think that old newspapers coupled with a more efficient process of aggregating customers and producing news, could a decent long-run business.

  14. spacer Kathy Kolb Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 5:15 pm

    1. He bought the papers at a very good price
    2. His companies have plenty of ads to run – think GEICO, Fruit of the Loom, etc.. see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway#Manufacturing.2C_service.2C_and_retailing

  15. spacer JLAnderson Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 10:29 am

    I’m sorry, Mr. Shirky, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, especially when it comes to the specifics of the newspapers Warren Buffett has purchased and the markets/communities he’s bought into.

    Many “experts,” and I use that term lightly, have derided the Buffett purchase and the papers he’s bought as “mere” local products that are just a step above the free shopper you can pick up at your local grocery store. As one of your commenters on this thread opined, no “real” journalist, editor or publisher thinks they’re working at a “real” paper unless it’s chock full of “important” national and international news.

    I would suggest to you that readers of local newspapers do NOT get their local paper for news they can get online at the NYTimes or WaPo. They read their local paper for news about their local city council or board of supervisors, about local businesses, about local schools and sports. Are they going to get that in the Times? Hardly.

    The vast majority of these papers have the highest-visited local news websites in their markets, higher than local TV stations, higher than local radio stations, which, by the way, get their 6 p.m. broadcast ledes by reading that morning’s paper.

    And for anyone to suggest a community of a quarter of a million people is going to turn to a blog or a “citizen journalism” website for in-depth, blanket coverage of their hometown is just stark raving lunacy.

    I would suggest to you that the printed version of most, if not all, of these newspapers — and community newspapers across the country — will be around for much longer than the entire Web’s worth of so-called “experts” believes. That’s not saying that there won’t come a point in time when print is discontinued, that the package isn’t delivered primarily by some other, as-yet-unconceived method, but print has a great deal of life left in it.

    And not just for readers, but for advertisers, too. LOCAL advertisers … who want to reach a LOCAL audience, a LOCAL prospective customer. There simply is no more cost-effective way to accomplish that job.

    As an aside, I would suggest to you that your contention these papers face the same future, the same fate as befell the Times-Picayune is more than a little bit flawed. It’s primary circulation area was hit by a cataclysmic disaster; the population of New Orleans proper and the greater region is half what it was pre-Katrina. Not coincidentally, the circulation of the T-P is half what it was pre-Katrina. Your comparison, while making for good copy, just is NOT valid.

    Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a journalist at one of these communities dailies and am counting down the days until I can say “My boss is Warren Buffett.”

  16. spacer Aardman Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 10:07 am

    Buffett might now newsprint news, but I don’t think he understands tech. Which is why he doesn’t invest in it. So I am puzzled that he would put money in an industry that seems to be best described, if you’ve been keeping up with the news, as “dying”.

    Then again, I don’t have billions in my name so who am I to claim omniscience?

  17. spacer JacopoGio Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 9:56 am

    Hi again Clay,

    I agree with you that Buffet’s list “does not explain the history of newspaper business over the last few years, it does not even explain the history of the business over the last few weeks” but I am sure that is also clear to Buffet because that is the reason for him to buy all those properties at a very “good” price.

    Buffet is not a Press Tycoon but an Professional Investor so, I am sure, he is more interested (and he thinks he knows) in how to extract all the “hidden value” of those Local News Providers in a local monopoly situation under his own big financial umbrella.

    So, yes the worst the previous situations is, the best it is for him, as an investor, to get a better return.

    And, of course, you are right again: “long before … many of the papers Buffett has invested in will reduced both print days and their newsroom staff” because that is probably part of his strategy to reduce direct cost and to push his Local Web News concept.
    In Buffet’s memo there is not a word concerning the future of the Printing or the Staff..

    On the other side, what solutions can you provide for the other old & local news papers not yet in Buffet’s hands?

    Jacopo

  18. spacer John Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 9:10 am

    My comment about a clear-eyed analysis of Buffet’s purchase referred not to Shirky’s piece, but the one done by Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/05/24/warren-buffett-and-newspapers-infatuation-or-cold-calculation/

  19. spacer JacopoGio Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 6:39 am

    Hmmm, Clay, I am not at all convinced by your points.

    Buffet’s credo is the following: “Our job is to reign supreme in matters of local importance” and, as an investor, he can think to be able to generate enough business from that.

    Buffet, adds also 3 conditions that seems quite “reasonable”:

    1) The town or city has no other competing dailies;
    (2) the paper keep its position as the primary source of information important to its readers;
    3) the town or city have a pervasive self-identity

    At those conditions, also your local Advertisers will be interested and “forced” to go with the Only Strong LocalNews Provider, no ?

    Best,
    Jacopo

    Jacopo, like the rest of that memo, that list is clear, straightforward, and wrong.

    The same week Buffett invested in Media General, the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced it would only print three days a week. The Times-Picayune doesn’t fit his list — that paper is the city’s only big daily; it has a growing number of readers; and New Orleans, of all towns, has “a pervasive sense of self-identity.” Yet the Times-Picayune is in the very trouble Buffett claims it shouldn’t be in. Not only does Buffett’s list not explain the history of newspaper business over the last few years, it doesn’t even explain the history of the business over the last few weeks. -clay

  20. spacer Tony Hursh Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 6:23 am

    As with others above, I think there’s still money to be made in good local coverage (although maybe not by printing it on paper and hand-delivering it to everyone’s home).

    Ego is a big factor here. Journalists, editors, and publishers don’t feel like they’re running a “serious” newspaper unless the main focus is national and international coverage. A purely local newspaper tends to be viewed as about one step above the local Thrifty Penny.

    Accordingly, papers have cut local coverage and staff to the bone in order to keep publishing, at a loss, the same national and international news that you can get free in hundreds of other places. That’s never going to work. Serving local content (and local ads) might — at least you wouldn’t be facing the Doom of a Thousand Competitors before you even start. Peter Mullen mentioned Craigslist, which is a great example. Sally’s Corner Garage and Jim’s Cupcake Bakery still need a way to reach their local customers, and are likely willing to pay for it.

  21. spacer Ciaran Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 5:16 am

    All very true. However what strikes me is that you talk of the fact that revenues mostly come from advertising as if this is the only way things can be, but in most of the rest of the world, the ratio is less extreme, and is one of the reasons that the US industry is in more trouble than in other markets.
    stateofthemedia.org/2011/mobile-survey/international-newspaper-economics/

    In places such as Germany & the Nordics, the balance between ad revenue and cover price/subs/etc… is less unbalanced, and so they are more likely to be able to manage the move from print to web. If Buffet can figure out how to do this in the US (unlikely I admit), perhaps his purchases won’t be quite so stupid.

  22. spacer Adam Lofting Says:
    May 30, 2012 at 1:38 am

    If you have the funds, is owning a newspaper (or several) not just a shortcut to PR these days? Even if it’s not a hugely profitable activity, you could have cost neutral access to a decent sized market to promote your stories, ideas and products (which could be much more profitable).

  23. spacer John Says:
    May 29, 2012 at 8:31 pm

    To me, this is a much more clear-eyed view of Buffet’s purchase and intentions.

  24. Why Clay Shirky is right and Warren Buffett is wrong — Tech News and Analysis Says:
    May 29, 2012 at 8:27 pm

    [...] newspapers? Media theorist and author Clay Shirky argues that it is neither: in fact, he says, Buffett misunderstands some fundamental things about the business he is buying into, and is therefore taking on a much bigger challenge than he probably [...]

  25. spacer Max Olson Says:
    May 29, 2012 at 7:47 pm

    You make fair points.

    But Buffett is well aware of newspaper economies, and their relationship with advertisers. He just may not have wanted to talk about it in a letter addressed mainly to journalists.

    Buffett in a recent Vanity Fair article:

    “…to many people—this kills people in the news business—the most important news in the newspaper are the ads.”

  26. spacer Wendell Cochran Says:
    May 29, 2012 at 6:48 pm

    My guess is that if you want to go broke, you would bet against Warren Buffet. A better question might be what he sees that others don’t? And I thought that current wisdom is that reader engagement is the way to advertisers.

    Just to be clear, I am not betting against Buffett making money on the deal, as I said in the original post.

    It’s a complicated deal, with lots of parts, including 10.5% interest on a $400 million loan to Media General, and a large stake, !20%, of MG’s broadcast properties.

    What I am betting is that the papers Buffett bought will no

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