{"id":137530,"date":"2026-02-18T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T16:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137530\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T16:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T16:32:08","slug":"warren-buffetts-company-takes-a-350-million-stake-in-the-new-york-times-6-years-after-bailing-on-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137530\/","title":{"rendered":"Warren Buffett’s company takes a $350 million stake in The New York Times, 6 years after bailing on newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six years after\u00a0Warren Buffett<\/a>\u00a0sold off all of Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s newspapers and predicted unending declines for most of the industry, Berkshire disclosed a new $350 million investment in The New York Times on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The somewhat surprising move highlighted the quarterly update Berkshire filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission about the company\u2019s stock holdings in\u00a0Buffett\u2019s last quarter as CEO<\/a>. Berkshire also increased its investment in Chevron<\/a> just before President Donald Trump ordered the arrest of Venezuela\u2019s president, and the Omaha-based company continued selling off more of its Bank of America<\/a> and Apple<\/a> shares.<\/p>\n

At the time Buffett\u00a0sold off Berkshire\u2019s dozens of newspapers<\/a>\u00a0in 2020 he concluded the industry was \u201ctoast.\u201d But even then he suggested that newspapers with a national brand like the Times or The Wall Street Journal might still do well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a full circle moment for Berkshire Hathaway in reinvesting in news and a huge vote of confidence by Berkshire in the business strategy of The New York Times,\u201d said Tim Franklin, a professor and chair of local news at Northwestern University\u2019s Medill School of Journalism.<\/p>\n

Franklin said the Times may have its roots in the newspaper business, but today it\u2019s a\u00a0thriving digital business<\/a>\u00a0with popular games like Wordle, a well-known sports platform called The Athletic and more than 12 million digital subscribers. He said maybe struggling local newspapers can draw some lessons from the \u201cdigital news powerhouse\u201d the Times has become and find ways to offer online games and showcase the local sports coverage that readers can\u2019t get elsewhere.<\/p>\n

These quarterly stock portfolio filings don\u2019t make clear whether Buffett made every move or whether one of Berkshire\u2019s other investment managers did. Buffett generally handled any investments worth more than $1 billion, so at the size of this Times investment it\u2019s not certain whether this was one of his bets.<\/p>\n

But many investors will still\u00a0try to copy it<\/a>\u00a0because of Buffett\u2019s remarkable track record over the decades before he\u00a0handed the CEO title<\/a>\u00a0over to\u00a0Greg Abel<\/a>\u00a0in January after six decades of leading Berkshire. Shares of the Times jumped nearly 3% in after hours trading after Berkshire disclosed the stake.<\/p>\n

Berkshire also picked up about 8 million more Chevron shares in the quarter to give it more than 130 million shares in the oil giant. That was a particularly well-timed bet because Chevron\u2019s stock has soared since Trump\u00a0promised to reinvigorate<\/a>\u00a0Venezuela\u2019s oil business, but Buffett has long been bullish about the oil business and Berkshire has been a major investor in Chevron and Occidental Petroleum<\/a> for several years.<\/p>\n

Chevron<\/a>\u00a0is the only major American oil company with significant operations in Venezuela, where it produces about 250,000 barrels a day. Chevron, which first invested in Venezuela in the 1920s, does business in the country through joint ventures with the state-owned company Petr\u00f3leos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA. Chevron\u2019s stock is up nearly 19% since the start of 2026 just before the U.S.\u00a0captured Venezuela\u2019s President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in a raid<\/a><\/p>\n

The other notable moves Berkshire made in the last three months of 2025 included selling off roughly 50 million Bank of America shares although it still holds nearly 81 million shares of the bank that he first started buying in 2011 while Bank of America was struggling with the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis. And Berkshire trimmed about 10 million shares off its massive Apple stake but continued to hold nearly 228 million shares at the end of last year.<\/p>\n

In addition to stocks, Berkshire owns dozens of companies outright including insurance giants like Geico, a collection of major utilities, BNSF railroad and many manufacturing and retail companies with brands like Dairy Queen and See\u2019s Candy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years after\u00a0Warren Buffett\u00a0sold off all of Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s newspapers and predicted unending declines for most of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51507,1208,9,11,10,980],"class_list":{"0":"post-137530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-berkshire-hathaway","9":"tag-media","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-new-york-times"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}