Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Rupert Murdoch

Newser.com: Michael Wolff on why the internet could kill Murdoch

Laura Oliver — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:59:38 +0000

Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff draws some damning conclusions from recent reports of “turmoil” at News Corporation-owned social networking site MySpace:

I tried once to make him [Murdoch] feel better about MySpace. It was a hapless effort: Every traditional media company that’s bought a significant internet company has failed, I said, brightly. I received a memorable scowl.

He may still retreat and practice his old black magic of making his errors disappear. But something’s got him. Something about this bloody internet has really gotten under his skin.

More and more, it feels like a death match.

Full post at this link…

Former media editor for the Times, Dan Sabbagh, disagrees with Wolff’s conclusion, but has some interesting figures on the Times’ finances that are worth a look…

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How much is an article worth? ‘Dead tree’ thinking could hinder digital content economy

Patrick Smith — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:50:14 +0000

Could you spare 10p for a news report? Maybe 5p for the sports results? Many in the news industry would like us to pay to see news articles that we’ve previously enjoyed for free, whether it’s via websites or hand-held devices.

But one of the problems of this brave, new paid-content world is that the news publishing industry has yet to move on from long-held assumptions about the value of content, inspired by centuries of physical, print distribution.

For example, just look at the sheer size of national newspapers: they are huge products, especially on weekends. Big is better, goes the saying – and mass reach gives you more circulation and advertising revenue.

But in the global, decentralised, just-Google-it content economy, it doesn’t work like that: the publishers that will win through will have the most relevant, findable, highest quality content – not just lots of it.

To illustrate the mismatch between offline and online economics, I’ve gone through Wednesday’s edition of the Times to find out just how much is in it…

News: there are 42 separate substantial news items in today’s Times, not including some of the smaller NIBs, and at least seven separate analysis pieces;
Comment: including the three leaders, 13 comment pieces make their way into the main book;
Sport: 21 news stories and two features;
Then there’s the diary section: five lengthy and well-written obituaries, crosswords, weather, travel and the Register pages of interesting factoids;
The Times2 centre pullout has 10 features, some short, some long, as well as four reviews.

So our grand total for today’s Times is more than 100 articles. The quality of writing, pictures and editing is, as you would expect, consistently high.

But if these articles were available via a pay-per-view offer, how much would you pay? If they were priced 10p each, that means to buy everything in today’s paper, you would have to pay £10; at 5p per article, that’s £5 per issue. But my copy of the paper only cost £1.

News International boss Rupert Murdoch will more likely opt for a subscription model for the Times and Sunday Times websites – just as he’s succeeded in selling long-term pay TV packages around the the world.

But to reach a competitive pricepoint, he and other publishers will have to massively realign the value of each piece of news and comment from its current-day, paper value of one or two pence to fractions of pence.

In reality, the real market value of news is what people will pay and the danger is that for an entire generation of readers weaned on the free-to-air internet, that price is nothing at all…

Patrick Smith is a freelance journalist and event organiser, and formerly a correspondent for paidContent:UK and Press Gazette. He blogs at psmithjournalist.com and is @psmith on twitter.

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paidContent:UK: Guardian’s paywall warning ’sounds like B.S’ to Murdoch

Judith Townend — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:41:17 +0000

paidContent:UK has a report from yesterday’s News Corp. conference call in which CEO Rupert Murdoch brushed off a paywall warning made by Alan Rusbridger last week. Murdoch hadn’t read the Guardian editor’s Hugh Cudlipp speech but when asked what he made of its content, said: “I think that sounds like B.S. to me.”

In regards to paywall progression at the Times, Murdoch said:

“We’re looking at various alternatives – and I don’t think we’re ready to announce yet …We’re in the midst of a lot of talks with a lot of people that are coming to a head – and you’ll hear a lot more from us in the next two months.”

Full post at this link…

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Audio: Alan Rusbridger on pay walls

Judith Townend — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:24:37 +0000

The audio is now available for Alan Rusbridger’s appearance at Coventry University last week. It’s a little patchy in quality but worth a listen for his comments in full: http://podcasting.services.coventry.ac.uk/podcasting/index.php?id=298

As reported by Marc Johnson for Journalism.co.uk, the Guardian editor expressed optimism about the future of the newspaper last Friday, despite reported losses of up to £100,000 per day late last year:

Speaking at this year’s second Coventry Conversation talk, run by the Coventry University journalism department, Rusbridger said that despite significant losses the Guardian had no plans to put up pay walls.

Discussing Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge for News International’s online content, Rusbridger said: “It would be crazy if we were to all jump behind a pay wall and imagine that would solve things.” He conceded that, whilst pay walls are unlikely to be erected around Guardian.co.uk, it was good that journalism was “trying different things.”

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A Wapping great welcome from Google

Judith Townend — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:18:48 +0000

A treat for Rupert Murdoch at News International HQ today, as he arrives for the annual Xmas bash: a huge billboard opposite the front gate, advertising none other than his sworn enemy, search giant Google. Does the News Corp CEO use Chrome, we wonder?

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NYTimes.com: Two years on at Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal

Judith Townend — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:12:40 +0000

The New York Times’ David Carr takes a look at the Wall Street Journal, two years after the paper was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Under Murdoch, it’s ’tilting rightward’ with a broadening array of news content he says.

“[U]nder Mr. Murdoch’s leadership, the newspaper is no longer anchored by those deep dives into the boardrooms of American business with quaint stippled portraits, opting instead for a much broader template of breaking general interest news articles with a particular interest in politics and big splashy photos.”

Full post at this link…

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#WANIndia2009: Les Hinton tells newspapers – ‘Beware geeks bearing gifts’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:30:27 +0000

Unsurprisingly Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones and part of the Murdoch empire, launched an impassioned attack on free content and Google yesterday as part of his speech to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.

Hinton criticised the promise of the internet (‘the false gospel of the web’) and while describing Google as an everyday wonder, said the search engine is at the heart of the crisis faced by newspapers:

“We were promised that eyeballs meant advertising, clicks meant cash. Free costs too much. News is a business and we should not be afraid to say it,” said Hinton.

“These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don’t understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts.Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable.”

Hinton was previously responsible for News International’s newspapers including the Sunday Times, which will introduce charging online next year. He said the industry itself was ‘the principal architect of its greatest difficulty’ for surrendering its content to aggregators and search engines for free – sentiments echoing Murdoch in Beijing only months ago.

Speech reproduced courtesy of WAN and Scribd.

All coverage of #WANIndia2009 from Journalism.co.uk can be found at this link.

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Mumbrella: Murdoch to remove sites from Google’s index?

Laura Oliver — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:56:42 +0000

Following his comments last month in which he described aggregators as ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’, Rupert Murdoch has suggested News Corp could remove its sites from Google’s index.

Speaking in an interview with Australia’s Sky News (video below): “I think we will [remove our content from Google's index]. But that’s when we start charging.”

As Mumbrella explains: “Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up links to it in users’ search results.”

In the interview, Murdoch also discusses what could be put behind potential news site pay walls.

Full post at this link…

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What’s Murdoch’s ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content?

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:46:49 +0000

Australian media is busy speculating over Rupert Murdoch’s new idea for content access.

Margaret Simons of the Content Makers, reports how Caroline Overington, senior writer and columnist with The Australian (part of Murdoch’s News Limited) let slip that Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall plans might include a ‘cool new toy’ for accessing media content.

Simons reports from the Media140 conference:

“Overington said that News Limited had many wonderful plans of which they were very proud, and they could not be unveiled yet, but she believed they would lead people to pay for content.

“Then in the closing stages of the session, she referred to iTunes, and how people had turned to paying for music that they could get elsewhere for free because of the entry of a ‘cool new toy’ in the iPhone.

“She added: ‘That’s kind of what we are thinking about.’

“So what is it, I wonder? Some kind of deal with Apple, soon to release its new electronic reader? A competing product? Very intriguing.”

An update, pointing to coverage of the Apple Tablet negotiations, with more speculation on the ‘iRupert’ at this link.

And Overington at Media140 courtesy of SlowTV.

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MediaGuardian: New pay walls will be delayed, says Murdoch

Laura Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:58:17 +0000

Rupert Murdoch has said the schedule for introducing pay walls to newspaper website including the Sun, the Times and the New York Post is ’slipping’.

According to this MediaGuardian report, the News Corp owner said he couldn’t promise to meet the original date of before June next year (the end of News Corp’s financial year).

Murdoch has also been talking with rival publishers, including the Telegraph in the UK, it is reported.

Full story at this link…

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