I know Warren Buffet is hallowed ground for some of you, but the Oracle from Omaha just cobbled together the weakest investment thesis since Yahoo! bought Broadcast.com, making Mark Cuban the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the planet – even if he does consistently pick losing teams.
Get this – Buffet, who’s never sent a Tweet, thinks that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall St. Jounal (of recent failed PewDiePie hit-job fame) and Carlos Slim’s New York Times (of generally failing fame) are going to be the only two publications with an “assured future” thanks to their robust online models. Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post (of government mouthpiece fame) gets an honorable mention.
There are only two papers in the United States that I think have an assured future because they have a successful internet model to go with their print model, and that’s the Journal and the New York Times. They have developed an online presence that people will pay for.
Now the third that may do it, again going back to Bezos, is the Washington Post – and he’s improved dramatically their situation online, so it’s conceivable that their math works.
Sorry Warren – faith in the MSM is completely broken, and people are increasingly migrating to sites like ZeroHedge and iBankCoin to avoid corporate-globalist propaganda. Plus, anything in the WSJ / NYT is available from about a dozen sources for free.
Now let’s take a look at how WSJ and WaPo are actually doing in terms of internet traffic – the cornerstone of Warren’s rad thesis – especially since iBankCoin’s “clickgate” article showed how mystery internet traffic from China as measured by Alexa.com (which shares an owner with the Washington Post) appeared to be synthetically inflating their rankings. Interestingly, the Chinese traffic has suddenly disappeared from the Alexa metrics, painting a dramatically different picture of NYT and WaPo’s penetration in the digital space.
Sorry Warren – these papers all suck, they’re being exposed for sucking, and you’re on the wrong side of the trade.
Of hilarious note, Squawk Box’s Becky Quick asked Buffet about “assholes” at the end of the interview!
Becky: So, how often do you think “that guy’s an asshole” but not tell him
Buffet: Well I’ve certainly thought that over the years, but it hasn’t all been guys either!
Warren gets a few bonus points for handling that like a boss – even if he does need to fire whichever ivy league MBA told him digital subscriptions work.
via http://ift.tt/2lO5mAv ZeroPointNow