Buffett: I'll be 'hands-off' with newspapers

Warren Buffett has pledged a “hands-off” policy at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. newspapers and called for their editors and publishers to make their papers indispensable to anyone who cares about their city or town.

“You should treat public policy issues just as you have in the past,” he wrote in a letter e-mailed Wednesday to publishers and editors of the daily newspapers that Berkshire owns and those it plans to buy from Media General. “I have some strong political views, but Berkshire owns the paper I don’t. And Berkshire will always be non-political,” he wrote. Buffett said he does not use Berkshire’s resources to speak on behalf of the company’s 600,000-plus shareholders. “I am 81, and many of you will outlive me as an employee of Berkshire,” he wrote. “But I am sure my successors will follow the ideas I am laying out in this letter. (Indeed, letting them know of this hands-off principle is a secondary reason for my writing this letter.)”
He also noted, “Berkshire buys for keeps.”