OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) Investor Warren Buffett says he didn't buy the Washington Post because he didn't want it to be a burden on his company or family.
His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate has purchased dozens of other newspapers since 2011. And Berkshire was the largest Washington Post Co. shareholder before the newspaper was sold to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for $250 million.
But Buffett told Fortune magazine he only briefly considered buying the Post because he didn't want to saddle Berkshire's next CEO or his children with a metro newspaper.
Buffett didn't go into detail about why he passed on the Post. But he has said in the past that he believes smaller papers will fare better because they remain the primary source of information about their communities.
Buffett served on the Washington Post Co. board for more than two decades, although he retired in 2011. Berkshire has held 1.7 million shares of the company since the early 1970s. The sale to Bezos ended Berkshire's stake in the newspaper, but Berkshire has not reported a sale of its stake in Washington Post Co. The company, whose holdings still include the Kaplan education business and Foreign Policy magazine, is renaming itself.