QuestionerYou say in the letter for the 95 report that the newspaper industry has lost another notch in its economic attractiveness. Can you elaborate on that?
WarrenYeah, what you are seeing in newspapers is a circulation trend that has been prevalent for a long time in terms of newspapers per household, but that has been declining and that a daily newspaper, and that I would say the trends of the last couple of years are somewhat worse in that respect. I would say that the ability to price, both at the circulation and advertising level, is as weakened a bit in recent years, not dramatically, but it's weakened a bit. At one time, newspapers really – daily newspapers – in single newspaper towns were probably as attractive economically as any business you could find. I mean, a large percentage of advertisers had very little choice in terms of using them as an advertising medium. People had less options in the way of learning what was going on around them. other than the daily newspaper. So they started from a position of extraordinary strength. They still have a very strong position, and I've tried to emphasize in that report. I mean, they're a bargain at the price they sell for. They give you all kinds of information with very low price, and they're a magnificent way for most merchants to reach their customers. But they are not – they do not have the exclusive advantages in many cases that they they had 15 or 20 years ago. Third-class mail has become more of an option. People have more ways of obtaining information. As we talked earlier, information can be processed electronically and delivered at far lower cost than people dreamt of 20 years ago. So all of those things eat away a little bit. It's still a very fine business. But those – I don't see anything. that will reverse those trends. I don't think that they will necessarily accelerate, but I think that if the only thing you owned in life was a daily newspaper, in a single newspaper town 20 years ago, you would feel slightly less secure today than you did at that time, but you'd still be a lot better off than owning virtually any other business.