The Oracle of Omaha doesn't bet on tech because he knows he doesn't understand it. His money has been made by only investing in businesses he fully understands.
I think he would think of "free news" differently if he had a better understanding of technology.
News is only free because the newspapers got into a war for eyeballs on the Internet. It is only now after they've had their businesses decimated that they realize that free content wasn't such a wise move on their part. There certainly isn't anything about free news that makes it a competitive advantage. If anything, it actually hurts them economically because they're giving away their product for nothing. No one sane runs a business on driving an increase in traffic.
People haven't paid for the content of newspapers since newspapers moved to an ad-supported business model a century ago. The newsstand and subscription costs were for printing and distribution, not for content.
On the internet, the cost of printing and distribution have collapsed, so it makes sense that readers should be able to access it for free. The problem is that advertising revenues have also fallen dramatically, which means newspapers are feeling pressure to start charging readers to produce the content.
The idea of charging for content is actually a throwback to the early days of newspapers, which were similar to websites and blogs in that they were extremely diverse in quality and viewpoint and publications wore their agendas and ideologies on their sleeves.
The professionalization of the news media followed the transition from subscription-supported content to ad-supported content, in large part because advertisers want content that is balanced and innocuous enough not to alienate large swaths of potential customers.
I don't know how the business of the news is going to shake out, but my hunch is that the people who figure out how to make money from online media won't be the people who figured out how to make money from print media.
Just as the proliferation of movable type destroyed some professions (scribes) and invented other professions (writers, publishers), the proliferation of the internet is also going to destroy some professions and create others.
One thing, though: I wouldn't bet against good writing over the long term.
But that's exactly what is interesting about his investment in newspapers. He generally stays away from stuff he doesn't understand. If he's betting on something that seems so obviously dead because of competition with tech, then I'd like to believe there's something valuable there.
I think he would think of "free news" differently if he had a better understanding of technology.