Rob Reid
speaker
1,484 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 23 Aug
Rob Reid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The persons who do own them are scarcely fit to write the smallest and most unimportant part of the paper.
When I got to this part, I thought of James J. Hill.
So I found James J. Hill because Charlie Munger listed him in the book Poor Charlie's Almanac as one of his, what he thought was one of the best business operators of all time.
James J. Hill is the only person in American history to found a railroad and not go bankrupt.
And he said the same thing about his edge when building railroads as Pulitzer is talking about his edge when buying and building newspapers.
And so let me read you this note about James J. Hill's advantage.
It's the exact same thing that's going on here.
James J. Hill's advantage was that he understood the railroad as an operating business, not as a financial instrument.
Most of his competitors came from finance or speculation.
They were often trying to build railroads to capture land grants, sell bonds, manipulate stock, or reorganize bankrupt systems.
Hill came from freight, warehousing, and transportation logistics.
So when he finally got control of a railroad, he understood the customer, the cargo, the routes, the costs, the bottlenecks, and the economics from the inside.
Hill had a priceless advantage because he came from inside the world of freighting and transportation, while most 19th century rail titans came from the outside world of finance.
But newspapers worth buying rarely appear at regular intervals.
So he's essentially like wandering in a professional desert.
He says at this point he was professionally rudderless.
So it says after years that had promised success in journalism and politics, Pulitzer entered a barren stretch, compounding his aimlessness.
He was 28 years old.
He had no definitive profession.
A sense of failure hung over him.
Showing 1061–1080 of 1,484 · page 54 of 75
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