Warren Buffett`s love of newspapers

John Naisbitt, who is considered one of the world`s leading futurists along with Alvin Toffler, wrote “Megatrends,” which he provided accurate insight about the future. More than 10 million copies of the book have been sold in the U.S. alone. The most frequent question he gets while lecturing around the world is, “How can you predict the future?”

Born to a Mormon family in Utah, Naisbitt had a eureka moment while newspaper headlines on street newsstands, thinking he could know everything that happened in the world if he read domestic newspapers. He concluded that knowing what was going on in the U.S. would make him knowledgeable about everything in the world.

As soon as he realized this, he quit his job at IBM and founded Urban Research with his severance pay. His company staff would read some 160 newspapers in the country and write reports on them for CEOs. His business was predicting the future by analyzing the present as reflected in newspapers.

A growing sense of crisis is prevalent in the newspaper industry, as young readers are quickly migrating to new media. Though advanced economies such as the U.S. and Japan are going through a similar experience, the trend is more pronounced in Korea than in other countries. Last year, online news readership in Korea hit 77.9 percent, more than 67.8 percent for newspapers. Newspapers were once said to last as long as there were toilets. These days, people simply tap on the screens of their tablet PCs while sitting on toilets.

According to a survey of 400 billionaires around the world by Forbes magazine, newspaper delivery was the most frequently cited as their first job. Investment guru Warren Buffett also delivered newspapers as a boy. His investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, held a newspaper throwing competition on the sidelines of its annual shareholders` meeting. Saying he “mastered” the art of throwing newspapers while delivering half a million copies of newspapers as a teenager, he won the competition, beating Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Though he heard that the newspaper business is a sunset industry, Buffett purchased Media General, a company that owned 63 newspapers. He said newspapers are the repository of knowledge. The prevailing view is that “smart” newspapers will overcome the crisis and survive. Those who get ahead of the times love newspapers.

Editorial Writer Chung Sung-hee (shchung@donga.com)