Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

As Warren Buffett mentioned earlier this year, when the bid by Rupert Murdoch for Dow Jones & Co. (DJ) became the headlines of the day for about 3 months, he wouldn't buy into the newspaper industry with Berkshire funds because it was a nonsustainable business.

The one thing he added was there would probably be a number of investors that will buy some newspapers, more for ego than anything else. This buying up of some newspapers will seem to imply that the industry may be vibrant for awhile. That would be a mistake.

Buffett has said the basic economics of the newspaper business are crumbling, and even the newspaper web sites will perform marginal at best.

"'Almost all newspaper owners realise they are losing ground in the battle for eyeballs," he writes. "If cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet, had come along first, newspapers probably would never have existed." For a while, he argues, the lure of newspaper ownership will encourage "non-economic individual buyers" but, as the importance of newspapers diminishes, "the psychic value of possessing one will wane."

One writer asks the question why "fight the war and wasting millions on the way, why not cash in now and watch someone else lose it?"

The answer to the question is people should do that, but they won't. I think they'll keep running them with the false hope things are going to turn around, right to the end when they go under. Now they're trying to put positive spin on the industry by presenting a few statistics that make it look like there's a future among certain demographics in the space.

All of this is happening because there's just no reason to read a newspaper anymore. Just like the nightly news, the people that were raised on it continue to watch, but that audience is growing older, averaging between 60 to 61 years-of-age. The newspaper industry, in general, is in the same place. There won't be any growth for them, only decline. To think differently would be the ultimate denial.