Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said most U.S. newspapers will keep losing money and hold little potential for a turnaround.

The billionaire investor, whose company owns the Buffalo News and is the largest shareholder of the Washington Post, said he wouldn’t buy most newspapers “at any price.” He made the comments at Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting today.

The problem, he said, is that newspapers were once essential to the American public. As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers – but news is available in many other venues, such as the Internet, which means a dramatic drop in advertising revenue.

The Washington Post dropped the most in more than 21 years May 1 after reporting a first-quarter loss from declining advertising sales, falling profit at its Kaplan education unit and costs to cut jobs. Buffett told Berkshire shareholders today that many newspapers have the “potential for unending losses.”

Newspapers across the U.S. have faced declining revenue amid the U.S. recession. The New York Times Co., publisher of the Boston Globe, has said it may close the Globe if it doesn’t reach an accord on savings, according to Dan Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild. The Times Co. said April 23 the newspaper it bought in 1993 for about $1 billion may lose as much as $85 million this year.

Chicago-based Tribune Co., owner of newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, filed for bankruptcy protection in December, and has been slashing jobs and seeking to sell assets to help it reduce as much as $13 billion in debt.

(Source: WSJ / Chicago Daily Herald)