WACO (June 22, 2012)--Three years after buying the Waco Tribune-Herald, Waco businessman Clifton Robinson and his son Gordon are selling the paper to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., the newspaper announced Friday morning on its website.
The purchase, for an undisclosed price, will close July 31.
The paper employs more than 120.
The paper quoted Clifton Robinson Friday as saying, “The long-term fate of the Waco Trib is in better hands with professional newspaper people than it is left in the hands of the local community."
Buffett’s company, which already owns the Buffalo News of New York and holds a 23 percent stake in the Washington Post company, announced last month that it was getting back into the newspaper business.
Berkshire announced a deal in May to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million, and Berkshire disclosed owning about 3.2 percent of newspaper firm Lee Enterprises' stock at the end of March.
Earlier this month the company announced that its newspaper division is acquiring the Bryan-College Station Eagle, which serves the home of Texas A&M University.
The Robinsons bought the Waco paper in August 2009 from Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, which had owned the Tribune-Herald since 1976.
A year ago, the paper announced that it was laying off nearly a dozen people including Editor Carlos Sanchez, who had been at the newspaper for almost ten years.
Publisher Donnis Baggett took on the added role as editor.
The paper's roots date back to 1897 when the Waco Daily Times-Herald was first published.
In 1899, that paper was combined with the Waco Daily Telephone to become the Waco Times-Herald and Telephone.
That paper later absorbed the Daily Chronicle.
E.S. Fentress and Charles E. Marsh, who published the Waco News-Tribune, purchased the Times-Herald in 1927 and published it as the Tribune-Herald until Cox purchased the newspaper nearly a half century later.
In 1994, the paper and reporters Mark England and Darlene McCormick, were nominated finalists for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series of stories on allegations of abuse and other criminal acts by Branch Davidians led by what the paper called "The Sinful Messiah," David Koresh.
