“Generally speaking, it pays to stay away from declining businesses. It’s very hard. You’d be amazed at some of the offers of businesses we get where they say “it’s only six times ebitda” and then they project some future that doesn’t have any meaning whatsoever . . . we are in several declining businesses. The newspaper business is a declining business. We do think we understand it pretty well. We will pay a price to be in that but it is not where the real money is going to be made at Berkshire. The real money is going to be made by being in growing businesses and that is where the focus should be. I would never spend a lot of time trying to value a declining business and think I’m going to get one free [puff] — what I call the cigar butt approach were you get one free puff . . . the same amount of energy and intelligence brought to other types of businesses is just going to work out better.”

-Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2012 annual shareholder meeting