Steve Pearlstein, business columnist for the Washington Post, wrote an open letter / opinion piece based on the recent remarks from Warren Buffet about purchasing newspapers from around the country that are struggling. This letter is filled with interesting (if not somewhat shrewd) quotes, such as this one, “Virtually every big city daily has been losing money, advertisers and readers at an alarming rate because of a disruptive new technology — the Internet — and the current recession.” Now, the problem that I think many see with that statement is the overtone that the internet is somehow a platform that the newspaper industry views as a detriment, not an opportunity, which has been their poor thinking all along.

There are some other interesting points, primarily Pearlstein’s assessment of these struggling city paper’s as “cigar butts”, meaning enterprises you could buy up for a low cost but still have the glimmer and promise to be something great. His suggestion to have a single entity purchase all of these papers and fly them under one syndicate is also interesting, considering there is a business model and proven winner in newspapers in that fashion, that of course being Switzerland’s Newsnetz. The Revival Network also is based on the model of being a syndicate, but one that is more democratic for the people. Still though, given the clout of Buffet and the notoriety of Pearlstein, these words and ideas could be put into place and could figure to be a massive shake up and new direction for the daily newspaper.