The one American business Warren Buffett will not buy "at any price"

As a 13-year-old in 1943, one of Warren Buffett's first jobs was to deliver newspapers.

Thirty years later, the Warren Buffet-owned Omaha Sun became the first weekly ever to win a Pulitzer.

Today, what is the one American business Mr. Buffett says he will not buy "at any price"? Newspapers.

[Mr. Buffett's] view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price," he said. "They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."

As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers, he said. But news is now available in many other venues, he said.

More Mr. Buffet at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

Image courtesy of BusinessWeek

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And: Scholars call for tax credit for buying newspapers
And finally: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?

Expert on Pulitzers says prizes must better recognize online journalism

Roy J. Harris Jr., author of a fine tome about "the most prestigious of the Pulitzers," thinks the time has come to "reinvent" the prizes, albeit without lifting their "bar" on citizen journalism.

From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor:

[I]f the Pulitzers recognized excellence across a wider range of print and electronic content, they could help lift journalism once more. . . .

[O]ne way to break the ice is to create special categories for online entries. But Pulitzer purists blanch at the idea, noting that over the years categories have been drawn to consider the quality of the work, rather than its source. A more sensible approach – one that points the way to the Pulitzers' 21st-century standard of excellence for all text-based journalism – is to broaden eligibility further, to all US online news operations, regardless of affiliation. That would allow magazine and broadcast-based online reporters to compete, too, while still letting the Pulitzers hold the line (for now) at barring citizen journalism, such as blogs and photos taken by individuals on a cellphone.

Also see: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists
And: Tabloid Baby piqued Pulitzer entry was rejected

Someone is piqued Pulitzer entry was rejected

Tabloid Baby is mad to have been declared out even before the match began.

Who is this Sig Gissler? Who is he to decide what the committee should consider?

Enjoy the harangue here.

Also see: Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists

Pulitzers, a humbling experience for Internet journalists

The Pulitzer Prizes announced today honored the usual suspects (such as the New York Times) and some unusual ones (the Detroit Free Press).

This year's prizes hailed not only the best American writing but also the medium of the Internet by allowing, for the first time, "online-only publications primarily devoted to original news reporting" to compete in all 14 prize categories.

In Sig Gissler's words, that made the prizes a "living organism."

Lisa Respers France writes for CNN:

Robert M. Steele, the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw University in Indiana, said . . . . opening the Pulitzer Prizes to online publications "gives further weight to the role that digital journalism plays in this era."

"In some ways, it's increased legitimacy for new forms of delivering journalism," Steele said. "It also heightens the discussion about the distinction between basic information and substantive journalism. Just because somebody throws something online doesn't mean it is journalism."

Surprisingly, despite the 65 entries accepted from 37 online-only outlets, not a single online-only publication won a Pulitzer.

Not one online-only publication was even a finalist.

Why not? Whoa, before we engage in fallacious generalization about mediocrity or about the role of citizen reporters, let's consider a possibility.

The best online outlets (think Talking Points Memo, Salon, Slate) simply did not apply for a Pulitzer.

That could well be the reason none won.

As Ms. France reports:

David Plotz, editor of Slate, said his site did not apply for the Pulitzers despite what he believes was his publication's exceptional political, technology and business coverage.

"We are not a hard-news site, and we don't do the kinds of stories and projects that have traditionally been awarded," Plotz said.

Plotz said the recognition for online journalism is more than warranted.

"It's an overdue acknowledgement that some of the best journalism in the world and in America is being created not for print publication but for places that live entirely on the Web," he said.

So there.

Only last December, Arizona State professor Dan Gillmor had offered the Pulitzer Prize Board three annotated tips to identify the best Internet journalism.

In retrospect, it seems Mr. Gillmor's effort may have been moot.

Also see: Journalism comes full circle with civic/citizen movement
And: Is the Web a poor medium of local news?
And: "The Internet weakens the press' authority"
And: "It's all about the content. It's not about the medium"
And: Scholars call for tax credit for buying newspapers
Finally: Should the newspaper industry get a bailout?