Tag Archives: Rupert Murdoch

Nieman: New data on the Daily suggests social media decline

Joshua Benton at the Nieman Journalism Lab has been analysing the success – or as he believes the decline – of Rupert Murdoch’s iPad only US newspaper, the Daily, by monitoring tweets sent directly from the app.

This post is interesting, not only as an insight into possible problems at the Daily, but for some of the techniques and tools Benton uses for his analysis.

No one outside News Corp. and Apple has a reliable way of knowing how often people read the Daily. But there is one way in which the Daily’s app interacts with the public web — through Twitter sharing. On nearly every page in the app, there’s a sharing button in the top right that allows the reader to share a link to the story on Twitter or other social networks. (A few pages, like the table of contents and user-customized pages, aren’t sharable.)

Benton has used PostRank, a Canadian social media indexing service that analyses how individual web pages are shared through social media.

It’s easy to think of a tweet as just 140 characters, but there’s a lot of metadata around that little snippet of text: when it was tweeted, who tweeted it, how many followers she has, what date she joined Twitter, and more. Amidst all that data is information about where each tweet was generated. Did it come from Twitter’s web interface, or from the official Twitter BlackBerry app, or a third-party app like Echofon or TweetDeck? That’s in there.

And thanks to Twitter’s requirement that app developers register with its API to allow in-app tweeting, that means you can track every time someone tweets from within the Daily.

The data doesn’t look good for the Daily. Its activity on Twitter seems to match my own perceptions of how they’re doing — an early rush of excitement; a decline as people lost interest and the app struggled with technical problems; a plateau once the tech got sorted out; and then another decline once the app started charging users.

Nieman Lab’s full post is at this link.

MediaGuardian: The Daily to launch in the UK within months

The Media Guardian reports that News Corporation’s iPad newspaper the Daily will be available in the UK within months, following comments by News Corporation’s chief digital officer Jon Miller at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

The arrival of the Daily in the UK will depend on when Apple’s new online subscription model becomes available in this country, the report adds.

The chief digital officer of Murdoch’s News Corporation, Jon Miller, told the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that the Daily would be available in western Europe “not too long from now”. When asked if that would be in the first half of this year, he answered yes.

Full story on Media Guardian at this link.

MediaGuardian: Rupert Murdoch at 80

The Media Guardian has gone to town today ahead of Rupert Murdoch’s 80th birthday this Friday. What with the phone-hacking scandal, Times paywall, and the BSkyB bid, the “press baron who dared to look to the skies”, as Roy Greenslade calls him, is still making headlines 15 years after News International’s infamous Wapping move and almost 45 years since he bought his first UK newspaper, the News of the World.

In bidding for the News of the World in 1968 and the Sun the following year, he illustrated a gift for making deals against the odds. He was not the favoured buyer in either case yet he succeeded because he exploited the necessary angles in each case. In the first, it was to act as the white knight in opposition to Robert Maxwell, playing to perfection his role of saviour of the paper’s, and its owners’, best interests. HYIP review introduce beginning and professional depositors to sites, the lists of which are permanently updated and appended with new web platforms for potentially fortunate and profitable finance investing. E.g., in 2022, the roster of such verified tools included the mentioned: Freexwith profit from 1 to 3.7% daily, Doradus with every day earnings from 1.8 to 5.87%, Fincoin with return from 3 to 10% on weekdays. HYIP sites can rightly be marked in the top lists only after they go at least one round, or let beginning and professional investors to break even.

Along with Greenslade’s profile, head of media and technology Dan Sabbagh has devoted his weekly media column to the so-called “Wizard of Oz”, assistant editor Michael White looks at his political dealings and influence, Steve Hewlett at his legacy, Martin Dunn at his empire building, Andrew Clark on his standing in native Australia, and, of course, an interactive timeline: the eight ages of Rupert Murdoch.

Image courtesy of the World Economic Forum on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Channel 4 News: BSkyB deal explained, Jeremy Hunt grilled

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt today cleared the way for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to purchase the 61 per cent of BSkyB it does not already own, for around £8 billion. As part of the deal, Sky News will be spun off to an ‘independent’ company.

Here, Channel 4 News picks over the details of the deal and grills the culture secretary over the issue of media plurality, which many believe to be under threat.

Guardian: Telegraph calls in private investigators over Vince Cable leak

The Guardian reported over the weekend that the owner of the Daily Telegraph is understood to have called in a private investigative firm look at the leak of Vince Cable’s comments about Rupert Murdoch to the BBC.

The comments, which the Telegraph had decided not to include in its report, were published by the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, on his blog.

Telegraph Media Group said today that it does not comment on internal security matters.

News Corporation ‘working around the clock’ to fix Daily bug

News Corporation has said it is “working around the clock” to fix a technical problem in its new “iPad newspaper”, the Daily, that has prompted hundreds of complaints and negative ratings from users.

Readers have left comments on the Apple’s US app store to complain of frequent crashes, load problems and other stability issues when the Daily attempts to fetch a new update of the newspaper.

Since its high-profile launch in the US last week, the product has attracted more than 3,600 reviews on the Apple online store.

While about a third of people gave the app the full five stars, the next most common rating was one out of five, with almost 1,000 people giving it the lowest score possible.

One reviewer wrote: “Is this the future of news? The app crashed the first time I ran it. After rebooting and restarting it hung while downloading the current edition.”

Another person adds: “Very slow loading, better fix it within two weeks or we are gone.”

In a blog post on the official website, the Daily’s tech developers wrote: “We’re working around the clock to improve the stability and functionality of The Daily.

“We’ve had massive uptake since Wednesday’s launch, and with that kind of audience scale in such a short period of time, we’ve seen some stability issues and bugs that need to be addressed.

“We’re working as quickly as we can to find these problems and fix them. The beauty of the application ecosystem is that we can constantly iterate on and improve our product, and we’re aiming to put out an update within the coming weeks.

“We are addressing the technical issues that we’ve seen and we want you, our readers, to know that this is a major priority for us.”

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch says the Daily will “push the boundaries of reporting”, offering news, features, photography, audio, video, and graphics for 99 cents a week or $39.99 for an annual subscription.

BECTU calls on members to take action over BSkyB takeover bid

Media and entertainment union BECTU is calling on its members to ask their MPs to support the referral of News Corp’s BSkyB bid to the competition commission.

“Action is easy and takes a matter of minutes. Visit 38 Degrees and enter your postcode to email your MP directly. If you have yet to sign the petition please do so now,” says a release from the union.

BECTU assistant general secretary, Luke Crawley adds: “Once the referral is secured, BECTU will continue its support for the campaign against the takeover which threatens to narrow the range of voices and opinion expressed in the UK’s media.”

The union has also called on culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is responsible for making a decision over the bid, to publish Ofcom’s report into the proposals, which was delivered to his department on the 31 December.

Speaking at London School of Economics last week, Hunt refused to comment on process or when a decision would be arrived at. He also declined to reveal when the Ofcom report would be published. His appearance at the university was interrupted by a demonstration over the bid.

Representatives from BECTU attended a meeting about the bid and media ownership at the House of Commons last week. Speaking at the meeting, Lord Razzall said that “all hell will break loose” if Hunt were to ignore a recommendation from Ofcom to refer the bid to the competition commission.

The Cutline: Steve Jobs to join Murdoch on stage for unveiling of new iPad publication

According to Yahoo blog the Cutline, Rupert Murdoch will be joined on stage by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs later this month for the launch of News Corp’s new iPad publication, the Daily.

Known as The Daily, Murdoch’s iPad publication has been the talk of the media world over the past couple months, and the News Corp. chief has even dubbed it his “No. 1 most exciting project.” The hush-hush project has been taking shape at the company’s Manhattan headquarters, but it will also have staffers in Los Angeles.

But while news of the editorial hires has steadily leaked out, The Daily’s brass have remained tight-lipped about the launch.

The Cutline’s full report can be found here.

Related Content:

Guardian: Murdoch and Jobs teaming up for iPad newspaper

Stephen Glover: ‘Attack Google too, if you value privacy’

In an article for the Independent this morning, Stephen Glover critiques the Murdoch backlash championed, he claims, by the Guardian and suggests that those opposing the BSkyB bid should consider how Google affects privacy.

there is a more powerful organisation that may pose a far greater threat than Rupert Murdoch, and yet it is barely criticised by right-thinking people. Its name is Google.

Glover looks at the role Google plays in daily life through features such as Google Maps and Google Mail as well as comparing the company’s Conservative political sway with that of Rupert Murdoch.

I know which organisation worries me more. I should say in his defence that my old friend Henry Porter has attacked Google in the past, describing it as “an amoral menace”. I am sure he would agree with me that, for all his sins, Mr Murdoch publishes some very good newspapers and produces some good programming. Google may provide an invaluable service but it actually produces nothing much of value while taking billions of pounds of advertising from newspapers and television.

You can read Glover’s opinion piece in full here.

Murdoch: ‘We will not tolerate wrongdoing’

Rupert Murdoch yesterday delivered the inaugural Margaret Thatcher Lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies in London. In his speech he spoke in support of an independent press and referred to the occasional “regret” he feels in relation to “editorial endeavour”. There was no direct mention of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, a paper owned by Murdoch’s News International, although he did make a general pledge to “not tolerate wrongdoing”.

Democracy will be from the bottom up, not from the top down. Even so, a free society requires an independent press: turbulent, enquiring, bustling and free. That’s why our journalism is hard-driving and questioning of authority. And so are our journalists. Often, I have cause to celebrate editorial endeavour. Occasionally, I have had cause for regret. Let me be clear: we will vigorously pursue the truth – and we will not tolerate wrongdoing.

Now, it would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted – or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators. Bloggers can have a social role – but that role is very different to that of the professional seeking to uncover facts, however uncomfortable.

His speech can be found in full here, or for a more visual representation see the Wordle below (note: we removed the words “Margaret Thatcher” from the visualisation):