Billionaire Warren Buffett is questioning the wisdom of changes the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper plans to make this fall.
Last week the Times-Picayune and three major Alabama dailies owned by the Newhouse family's Advance Publications announced plans to cut back to three printed issues a week. The newspapers will shift their focus to online news.
Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway just bought 63 newspapers from Media General for $142 million, said he was surprised by the New Orleans announcement.
"It seems to me that three days a week is simply unsustainable over the longer term. Either a publication is a newspaper or a periodical and I think three days a week crosses the line," Buffett said in his letter.
Buffett said he's puzzled about why the economics of publishing the Times-Picayune seven days a week don't make sense, because he thought the newspaper had a high penetration rate in New Orleans -- a strongly defined community.
New Orleans musician Evan Christopher says Buffett's reaction is in response to an open letter he wrote to Buffett about the changes at the Times-Picayune. Advance Publications plans to make similar changes at The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile and The Huntsville Times.
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