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Omaha World-Herald
The Omaha World-Herald is a daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, the primary newspaper of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area.
It was locally owned from its founding in 1885 until 2020, when it was sold to the newspaper chain Lee Enterprises by its most recent local owner, Warren Buffett, chairman of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway.
For more than a century it circulated daily throughout Nebraska – a state that is 430 miles (690 km) long. It also circulated daily throughout all of Iowa, and in parts of Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, and Wyoming. It retrenched during the 2008 financial crisis, ending far-flung circulation and restricting daily delivery to an area in Nebraska and Iowa within an approximately 100-mile (160 km) radius of Omaha.
The newspaper was the world's last to print both daily morning and afternoon editions, a practice it ended in March 2016.
The World-Herald was the largest employee-owned newspaper in the United States from 1979 until 2011: Omaha construction magnate Peter Kiewit bought the newspaper and its television station, the local ABC affiliate, in 1962 for $40.1 million from Omaha-based World Publishing Co. Upon Kiewit's death in 1979, he arranged for the paper to be spun off to its employees. At the time, the newspaper reported daily circulation of 235,589 and Sunday circulation of 301,682.
Upon his death, Kiewit, who had run a Fortune 500 construction and mining company, also had arranged to keep 20 percent of the resulting Omaha World-Herald Co. in the hands of the Peter Kiewit Foundation. The foundation's hold of 20 percent of the company's shares kept the newspaper from being easily sold to an out-of-town competitor – the fate of many major metropolitan newspapers during the 1970s through the 1990s: Its ownership structure was called "the most bullet-proof in the industry" when it came to corporate takeovers.
In 2011, Omaha native Warren Buffett purchased the paper for $200 million through his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. The newspaper's stock had clocked a compound annual growth rate of 18% from 1985 through 2007, but the 2008 financial crisis affected it financially. Employees were said to be ready to cash out, with the blessing of the Kiewit Foundation: Even as the newspaper had been able to maintain a circulation penetration rate in its home market that ranked as the U.S.'s seventh-highest, its circulation by the time of the sale had fallen to 170,455 daily and 228,344 on Sunday.
Buffett's BH Media Group was unable to turn around the precipitous fall in circulation and advertising revenue, and Buffett eventually threw in the towel, selling The World-Herald and its other stable of newspapers to Lee Enterprises for $140 million in cash in January 2020. Buffett had said the previous year that newspapers were "toast." Buffett financed the Lee purchase, which also refinanced Lee's debt so that Berkshire would become its sole lender, for $576 million at a 9 percent interest rate. The transaction did not include the newspaper's physical property, which Lee entered into an agreement to lease from Berkshire.
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Omaha World-Herald
The Omaha World-Herald is a daily newspaper in the midwestern United States, the primary newspaper of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area.
It was locally owned from its founding in 1885 until 2020, when it was sold to the newspaper chain Lee Enterprises by its most recent local owner, Warren Buffett, chairman of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway.
For more than a century it circulated daily throughout Nebraska – a state that is 430 miles (690 km) long. It also circulated daily throughout all of Iowa, and in parts of Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, and Wyoming. It retrenched during the 2008 financial crisis, ending far-flung circulation and restricting daily delivery to an area in Nebraska and Iowa within an approximately 100-mile (160 km) radius of Omaha.
The newspaper was the world's last to print both daily morning and afternoon editions, a practice it ended in March 2016.
The World-Herald was the largest employee-owned newspaper in the United States from 1979 until 2011: Omaha construction magnate Peter Kiewit bought the newspaper and its television station, the local ABC affiliate, in 1962 for $40.1 million from Omaha-based World Publishing Co. Upon Kiewit's death in 1979, he arranged for the paper to be spun off to its employees. At the time, the newspaper reported daily circulation of 235,589 and Sunday circulation of 301,682.
Upon his death, Kiewit, who had run a Fortune 500 construction and mining company, also had arranged to keep 20 percent of the resulting Omaha World-Herald Co. in the hands of the Peter Kiewit Foundation. The foundation's hold of 20 percent of the company's shares kept the newspaper from being easily sold to an out-of-town competitor – the fate of many major metropolitan newspapers during the 1970s through the 1990s: Its ownership structure was called "the most bullet-proof in the industry" when it came to corporate takeovers.
In 2011, Omaha native Warren Buffett purchased the paper for $200 million through his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway. The newspaper's stock had clocked a compound annual growth rate of 18% from 1985 through 2007, but the 2008 financial crisis affected it financially. Employees were said to be ready to cash out, with the blessing of the Kiewit Foundation: Even as the newspaper had been able to maintain a circulation penetration rate in its home market that ranked as the U.S.'s seventh-highest, its circulation by the time of the sale had fallen to 170,455 daily and 228,344 on Sunday.
Buffett's BH Media Group was unable to turn around the precipitous fall in circulation and advertising revenue, and Buffett eventually threw in the towel, selling The World-Herald and its other stable of newspapers to Lee Enterprises for $140 million in cash in January 2020. Buffett had said the previous year that newspapers were "toast." Buffett financed the Lee purchase, which also refinanced Lee's debt so that Berkshire would become its sole lender, for $576 million at a 9 percent interest rate. The transaction did not include the newspaper's physical property, which Lee entered into an agreement to lease from Berkshire.