Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…The newspaper business was, for a long time, Warren Buffett's canonical example of a franchise, the best type of business you can possibly own. Indeed. This, today listeners, is the story of the paper that loomed large over all the others, The New York Times. Today we peer into what I think is the oldest company we've ever done on this show, founded over 170 years ago before the civil war. The Times has seen the majority of American history and for the majority of its life, it's been controlled by a single family. For many of you, a family you've probably never heard of. This is a family whose paper shaped the American perception of current events through World War I, World War II, Vietnam. Really, their newspaper shaped your perception of America itself, your parents perception, and your grandparents perception, you get it. It is probably safe to say that the five generations of the Ochs Sulzberger family has been the closest thing that America has ever seen to a dynasty. After a century of near continuous prosperity, The New York Times has seen an incredibly dramatic fall and then rise just in the last 20 years. The Internet and social media on top of it brought ruin to the entire traditional journalism industry. In the late 2000s, The New York times got to such a low point that they even sold their office building to free up some cash while they rented it back from the buyer. Indeed. I can't wait to talk about that part of their history.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.