Dear Mr. Buffett_ What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street - Janet M. Tavakoli [8]
The Wall Street Journal sparked a discussion of how the news media has changed. Stock price quotations are almost instantaneous. There is more financial news today than ever before originating from a wider variety of sources including the Internet.
Warren loves newspapers, recognizing that newspaper ownership confers status and influence out of proportion with economic gain, yet run properly there is also a lot of economic gain to be had. As he talked, Warren mentioned Kay. Kay? My mind raced. Who is Kay? Fortunately, I quickly realized that Warren meant the late Katherine Graham, president and publisher of the Washington Post. Warren said she was “great lady,” a “remarkable woman,” and recommended I read Personal History, her Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography.
With Kay’s sponsorship and his substantial ownership position, Warren became a board member of the iconic Washington Post. He said she was the least confident person he had ever met, a curious fact given her privileged life, social standing, and accomplishments. In Personal History, Katherine Graham expresses admiration for Warren and expresses her gratitude to him for the tutelage he gave her in financial matters. She relied on him for both professional and personal support, and his mentor-ship was a source of strength, giving her confidence. The otherwise all-male board was initially wary of their friendship and she noticed some sexism: “Tom Murphy [another member of the Washington Post’s Board of Directors] could consult Warren and no one questioned him, but if I consulted him, it seemed to be something threatening and sinister.”1 Often, when men and women have a close business relationship, it is characterized as a Mephistophelean bargain, but when men form a close business relationship, it is just business. Ms. Graham also noticed: “As Warren and I started to spend more and more time together, people’s eyebrows shot up, and I was young enough then for our relationship to become quite an issue.”2 Even a woman of Katherine Graham’s stature and maturity—she was 13 years older than Warren—could not escape petty innuendo; but she did not let it deter her from taking advantage of Warren’s expertise or spoil her appreciation of their friendship.
I could well imagine Warren’s companionable appeal to Katherine Graham, and Warren lights up when he reminisces about Ms. Graham. He seems to enjoy women without enjoying them too much. It is the difference between spending time with an art connoisseur and a cat burglar. One makes you feel as if you are a national treasure; the other makes you feel as if you are about to be snatched and stuffed in a bag, never to be heard from again. For his part, Warren says he admired Kay’s courage and persistence.
Warren recognizes that the news business had changed. He said the Wall Street Journal threw away a golden opportunity to dominate Internet business news. Internet financial news is both instantaneous and less reliable. Newspaper and magazines—even the online versions of legacy print media—often lag behind blogs and certain specialty new services. There are a handful of Internet financial journalists who are every bit as good as the best reporters in the print media, but they are scattered all over the Internet.
Matthew Currier Burden wrote a book about this phenomenon: The Blog of War. The military is having difficulty containing sensitive information as soldiers pour out their stories over the Internet.The day after our lunch, I sent Warren an article written by John Hockenberry, “In Iraq for 365,” from Wired.com. Warren wrote back that he found the blogs on Iraq particularly interesting along with “the potential that it has for changing journalism.”
The blogs of soldiers in Iraq are much more informative than any state-side news media, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other Internet news sources. Warren is keenly interested in that.Traditional channels of information are being bypassed and passed up by direct information from the front lines, something that had never happened before the