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Warren Buffett, ever since his Washington Post delivery-round days, developed a keen interest in quality journalism. Indeed he relied on newspaper information to help develop his ideas.
Anecdote: about six years ago I was in Omaha when a fellow shareholder asked how he and Charlie Munger spent their time. You might imagine that two people controlling such a large company would run around visiting factories, chairing management meetings and going through reams of financial data.
But no, Warren said that he read six newspapers a day. Charlie then said that he did not read as many as Warren – he only read five per day.
Quick as a flash, Warren said “It shows!”
So, you see, they both have a great respect for analytical, critical, investigative journalism.
Time is precious – what you choose to read can help to form character, as well as breadth and depth of knowledge.
The opportunity
In 1968, as he shifted his focus to small companies he could control, he quite fancied the idea of becoming a newspaper proprietor, especially if the newspaper was selling at a reasonable price.
The opportunity arose, in a very small way. His wife, Susie knew the owner-publisher of the Omaha Sun newspapers. One day Stanford Lipsey went to Buffett’s office in Kiewit Plaza and said he wanted to sell.
The company produced five/seven very local weekly newspapers in the greater Omaha area, with a total circulation of 50,000 and revenue over $1m. These contained the usual local stories of the goings-on in the neighbourhood.
But they also investigated stories that the dominant publisher in Omaha, Omaha World-Herald, had missed or timidly chose not to print. Often these concerned the wrongheadedness and misdemeanours of those in local public office and other prominent Omahanians.
Even Stan Lipsey was only luke-warm about the business prospects of the papers. So whether Buffett was largely motivated by………….To read the rest of this article, and more like it, subscribe to my premium newsletter Deep Value Shares – click here http://newsletters.advfn.com/deepvalueshares/subscribe-1.
