Kroeger’s Division

Berkshire’s news division is run by Terry Kroeger, 51, an almost three-decade veteran of the World-Herald. Kroeger has embarked on his own online-subscription strategy to return the publications to growth.

“You can’t spend millions of dollars assembling something and then give it away,” he said in a 2012 interview. He didn’t immediately return a request for comment yesterday on the most recent circulation decline.

Digital subscriptions have taken root across the industry, with about 41 percent of U.S. newspapers charging online, according to a report by Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell Inc.

Readership fell at Buffett’s three biggest publications: the Buffalo News, one of Buffett’s earliest newspaper acquisitions and the largest in his collection, with a 4.6 percent slide in circulation; the World-Herald, with a 5.3 percent decline; and the Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, with a 4.6 percent drop.

Small Portion

Altogether, Buffett’s 28 newspapers had about 767,771 daily readers last year, compared with about 813,275 in 2012. The drop in Sunday circulation was even steeper, falling 6.9 percent to 979,603 readers across 26 publications.

Berkshire shut down one of the publications it acquired from Media General Inc. in 2012 after determining that the Virginia paper couldn’t generate sustainable profits. It has also cut jobs in information, technology and production departments at the Tulsa World in Oklahoma to save money.

Newspapers still represent a tiny part of Buffett’s business. Berkshire’s media group, which doesn’t include the Buffalo News, had sales of about $520 million in 2013, part of the company’s total revenue of $182.2 billion.

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