Newspapers have a rich history of service for the Americans who read them and buy them on a daily basis.
They inform, entertain and provide a link within the community we live and a line to the outside world. They perform on a level and at a depth that television cannot do, or could not afford to do anywhere outside the 24-hour cable news channel.
Newspaper companies also have a rich history of providing a strong source of cash flow with high-profit margins and low overhead in the years before the Internet came along and changed the way newspapers functioned and profited. Then, corporations couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, as they became pieces of a portfolio rather than pieces of history and community.
But the death knell of newspapers is far from being rung; the medium as we know it is far from over. In fact, it has changed its focus and is arguably at its most laser-guided and streamlined for success.
The newspaper industry has found its strength and life in the small and mid-sized community papers, with hyper-local content and an emphasis on our friends, neighbors and the way a small community functions at its local government level, bringing home the decisions many of us are too tired, or too wrapped up with daily life to obtain ourselves.
It’s nice to see someone with the stature of billionaire Warren Buffett recognize this. A subsidiary of his Berkshire Hathaway has just snatched up 63 newspapers, including 26 daily newspapers that are historical pieces of their communities. A man who is very forthright with his opinions is talking about this acquisition in a way we haven’t heard investment groups talk about huge newspaper buys before.
He wants his new acquisitions to maintain their news space in an age where the news hole is shrinking in direct proportion to ad revenue. He doesn’t want this paper to echo his politics or his ideas, instead, operating in their communities, reflective of their communities.
He gets it. He gets what the community newspaper is about. What we do, how we tick, who we serve. “No one has ever stopped reading when halfway through a story that was about them or their neighbors,” Buffett said.
This might very well be the type of piece that interests no one but journalists and media watchers. Or it could provide insight into the life that remains in community newspapers, and what they mean to the towns and areas they serve.
The Internet and TV can provide the details at the state capital, the buzz on the Beltway and how the rest of the world is faring. The community newspaper, however, is the only real vehicle to take you into city council chamber, the school board meeting, even down to the classroom and the living rooms of the people you interact with on a daily basis.
We’re an indispensable part of your life.
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