[Milhous]

This story's ending portrays Buffett as backing away from his previously held position

Buffett said declines in circulation result from readers turning to alternative sources , such as free Web sites and television. And he said owning the dominant news Web site in a region is not enough to guarantee sustained profitability for newspaper firms.

As an example, he cited Buffalo, where Berkshire owns the Buffalo News and Buffalo.com, which he described as the most popular news Web site in the city. "We've got the best position, but it isn't remotely like owning the paper 30 years ago."

Buffett said buying newspapers was once an excellent investment because the dominant paper in any city could count on steady advertising revenue and could raise ad rates, often as much as it wanted, every year. With circulation dropping, that is no longer the case, Buffett said.

to tout a neoauthoritarian strategy of trying to put the paste back into the tube with media monopoly restoration

Buffett muses out loud: "The ideal combination would be if The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Post had a joint Web site, and you couldn't get any one individually. That, you could sell for a fair amount of money, and it would have one hell of a readership.

Meanwhile USA Today's Chuck Raasch defends MSM opining that supposedly stellar MSM "cargo" outweighs monopoly ownership of information pipes in the politics of news.

[Brad from Tennessee]

Raasch of USA TODAY may be right—at this point in time—about the “stellar MSM ‘cargo’” but as the MSM gets weaker so does its news product. Big papers are being forced to lay off reporters, close foreign and out-of-town bureaus and rely on wire reports from AP, Reuters and other wire services to fill their pages. I believe the emergence of the “New Media” will give rise to new international news services on the internet. The AP has had a virtual monopoly for decades and its product has gone from mediocre to piss poor. Buffet’s idea of combining the three big paper web sites could work if the subscription cost is not too high.