Buying The Times, then in desperate straits, would infuriate his enemies, raise his world profile and dilute his image as a vulgarian.Given the dire state of the newspaper industry, it could not conceivably make money. Fifty offers were received by Thomson but none was related to the paper’s (negative) value. An anti- Establishment owner would have bought The Times to get The Sunday Times, and closed it. Murdoch did not.
The bulky Beebster bashes Rupert Murdoch and looks forward and back into the world of British hackdom. His "Unreliable Sources" sounds like an excellent and weighty read. See the review in today's Guardian.
It was a rare pleasure on Thursday to call some of Hollywood’s most plugged-in players and hear them express undisguised drop-dead shock at all the high-level changes that Rupert Murdoch has wrought in his News Corp. entertainment empire.
“Holy shit,” exclaimed the head of one of the biggest talent agencies upon learning of all the recent upheaval at the company. That pretty much summed up the sentiment all around town.
Sources say the long knives may also be out for entertainment president and ex-NBCer Kevin Reilly, who has apparently clashed with prickly Preston Beckman.
The recent departure of Murdoch’s number two, Peter Chernin, seems to have tipped the dominoes at the media giant. As predicted here last week, the two co-chairmen of Fox’s film studio, Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman, have been promoted to run all “Los Angeles based creative production units.” That means they add the company’s television-production operation to their portfolio.
But that’s not the stunner. On Thursday, Peter Liguori, the chairman of Fox Broadcasting, was unceremoniously axed after three years at the network. His surprise replacement is Peter Rice—the smooth and very successful head of the Fox Searchlight art-house label. The unexpected—and impressively unleaked—announcement took Hollywood by storm since Rice entirely lacks television experience (but not ambition).
Rice, 42, is a smart and well-regarded Brit who managed to turn out a string of massive hits—Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire—at a unit that was founded to make smaller movies for a specialized audience.
The fact that he was awarded the network job has led many of the industry’s best tea leaf readers to conclude that Rice is in line to ascend to even greater heights. He will have a chance to learn television before making the next upward move, which would follow the script written by Chernin during his long tenure at the company.
“Peter Rice is going to hunker down and learn a new business,” says a prominent producer. And then this observer, not normally given to hyperbole, adds, “He’s going to become rapidly the most powerful executive in Hollywood.”
That perception is shared by many inside the company. “Around here he’s called ‘The Chosen One,’” says one executive. “I’ve also heard ‘The Anointed.’”
Amazingly, even the most acid Hollywood observers have nothing bad to say about Rice (though if they did, you can be sure they’re not going to say it now). “There’s nobody with his record,” marvels a well-known producer, also not usually prone to hyperbole. His low-key style and impeccable manners hold obvious appeal for Murdoch, who is said to loathe Hollywood self-indulgence.
Former Fox studio chairman Bill Mechanic, who made no secret of his disdain for Chernin, has nothing but praise for Rice, who worked for him during his tenure at the studio. While Rice is now strongly associated with the “art-house” niche, Mechanic says he established himself as a strong executive in the main film division, where he was involved with such hits as X-Men and Moulin Rouge. “There was nothing niche-y” about that,” Mechanic says. He adds that when he put Rice in charge of Fox Searchlight, “I had to talk him into working in a niche.”
For the record, Mechanic believes the Hollywood chatterers are reading too much into Rice’s new job. Moving people around is not unusual for Murdoch. “He doesn’t think there’s anything that idiosyncratic about any business,” he says. But it's probable that the void left by Chernin's departure will make for interesting times at Fox for some time to come. Chernin presided over many executives who were good at their jobs but lacked diverse experience, observes a high-level insider, which “kept him very safe in his job and kept everybody from climbing all over each other.”
His departure leaves a void in the company. Obviously a number of other people have come out ahead in this reorganization, notably Gianopulos and Rothman; and Tony Vinciquerra, who will be Rice’s boss at the network (at least on paper). Vinciquerra is a numbers-cruncher who has been running the cable networks and has now added the broadcast network to his portfolio. He has no background as a creative executive though he might be tempted to try it out now.
Obviously, the biggest loser is Liguori, who was thrown to the curb by Fox. But sources say the long knives may also be out for entertainment president Kevin Reilly, who recently left his job at NBC after a long bout of internecine warfare. Apparently Reilly has clashed with prickly Preston Beckman, who runs the network’s scheduling and who Murdoch literally keeps on speed-dial. Another insider says Mike Darnell, the feisty and successful head of “alternative programming” (like American Idol and Hell’s Kitchen), has battled with Reilly as well.
“Kevin’s done a good job but he still hasn’t pulled out a ratings monster,” says a Fox insider. “Every development executive is only as good as the shows they develop. Dollhouse, (which Reilly had been a big supporter of) hasn’t done very well. Kevin was the one who wanted Joss Whedon.”
Reilly has held his job at Fox for only eighteen months, during which he had to contend with the writer’s strike. Nasty, brutish and short—that is the life of a network president.
While succession issues at News Corp. troubled Wall Street even before Chernin’s abrupt departure, the 78-year old Murdoch seems willing to leave the number two job at News Corp. vacant for the moment. Directly reporting to him now are Gianopulos and Rothman; Vinciquerra; Fox Interactive chief Peter Levinsohn; and Roger Ailes, who oversees the Fox News Channel and local Fox television stations across the country. And what of Murdoch's 36-year-old son James, currently overseeing operations in Europe and Asia? Rumors that he would be called in to take Chernin’s job have proved unfounded—at least for now. “I think Rupert’s going to keep him in Europe for a while,” says a well-placed Fox executive. “And I think James wants to stay there.”
He is clearly as enthused about the opportunities presented by digital technology as anyone and, judging by Friday's announcement that David Penberthy has been lined up to run a wholly new, integrated multi-media product that is unlike anything seen in Australia, he is prepared to act on this excitement.
Where others see doom, Murdoch appears to see opportunities, which is what you would hope for in a chief executive. While he is also preparing to make cuts to cover revenue shortfalls (although we would counsel him against savaging his editorial teams), Murdoch is clearly also prepared to invest in journalism, which is refreshing to see.
However he does tend to come over a bit Thatcherite when dismissing the concerns of those in the newsrooms who are worried about their future or concerned they might be left behind as their mastheads rush to new forms of delivery.
He spoke of some journalists as "misguided cynics who are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity". These people he dubbed "doom and gloomers", wrapped in "self-pity", which he says -- rightly -- is "never pretty".
It was all a little redolent of the days when the UK was suffering the worst unemployment for decades and the Tory home secretary advised those who couldn't get a job to "get on your bike" to find work.
Would it were as simple as that. There is pessimism in the industry -- you only have to read any of the news sites -- such as Media Guardian in the UK or Paper Cuts in the US -- to learn almost daily of struggling newspapers announcing plans to retrench more staff. A recent debate about how many journalists you would need to start up a newsroom were all the newspapers to fail in, say, Philadelphia or Dallas (about 35 was the finding of a recent workshop at the City University of New York. That's 10 per cent of the current editorial staff on the Philadelphia Inquirer, by the way).
The Media Alliance recently conducted a survey of newsrooms and found there was a great deal of enthusiasm for new media and the new ways of doing things. Most journalists have accepted that the new landscape means more work, usually over more hours and, again, usually without being paid any more for doing it.
But the biggest concern isn't pay and conditions, it is that their managers, by trying to squeeze a print edition of a newspaper and a constantly updated website out of no extra staff -- indeed, in most cases, less journalists -- risks sacrificing quality.
So it's not self-pity, but pride in their work that is fuelling concern among a lot of journalists.
The other main finding of our research, which we will be releasing in a report on the future of journalism at a major conference in Melbourne on November 26, is that journalists are rarely being given the training they need to face a changing future with any confidence.
This appears to be the main concern of working journalists -- especially our freelance members, but also those actually in the newsrooms: that they will be left behind as the pace of change quickens. For freelance journalists this is a natural concern: their business model has been shaken more profoundly by the digital revolution. They face the double-edged sword of recession, with the concomitant fall in demand for their services, and a revolution in the industry they serve, which is creating in newsrooms a new world at which they can only press their noses against the glass.
But when we talk with members inside newsrooms we get no sense that they are being properly prepared for the way their work is changing. Too often we hear that journalists are "just being given what they need to do their jobs". As our report finds, only a tiny fraction of respondents said they were being given a comprehensive multi-media reskilling.
For all I know our mainstream media is preparing to roll out comprehensive training courses that will turn employees -- in the words of Joanna Geary, a UK blogger on journalism: "from dinosaur to digital natives". Geary has been tasked to design modules to do this over a five-day training course for the Birmingham Evening Post. We could use the same kind of consciousness-raising exercise here.
Next week the Alliance is holding the third of its discussions on the Future of Journalism in Melbourne. We've hosted similar events in Sydney and in Brisbane. Some of what we have heard has been uplifting, some -- frankly -- pretty scary. We've heard Roy Greenslade mourning what he sees as the almost inevitable death of newspapers and Phil Meyer, after more than five decades in journalism, wishing he was just starting out so that he could compete with today's young journalists in using all the exciting new tools available.
Meyer is speaking at our event again next week and he makes for inspiring listening.
You won't hear of doom and gloom from him. But Meyer operates on twin mantras: you must uphold quality if you are to survive and journalists must be given the training they need to compete. He's spent the past twenty-odd years in journalism education doing just that.
And Australian journalists don't want to hear of doom and gloom, either. But like Meyer, they want to remain proud of what they do and they need to be given the skills to flourish in the new world.
The former Times editor Robert Thomson was named managing editor of the Wall Street Journal last night as Rupert Murdoch tightened control of the world's top selling business newspaper.
Thomson's new role is the top editorial position at the Journal. He replaces Marcus Brauchli, who quit last month amid signs of discontent over the speed of change at the paper since it was taken over by Murdoch's News Corporation in December.
News Corp said the appointment had the unanimous approval of a committee set up to safeguard editorial independence of the Journal. The committee objected to a lack of consultation when Brauchli resigned.
"Mr Thomson's outstanding career as a financial journalist, foreign correspondent and editor equips him perfectly for the position," Murdoch said.
Thomson, 47, is an Australian compatriot of Murdoch and he has been a loyal lieutenant of the press baron for six years. At the end of last year, he moved from London to become publisher of the Journal. His new role gives him formal control of its newsroom which, according to the paper's journalists, he was effectively overseeing anyway. He will also be editor-in-chief of Dow Jones' newswires service.
Murdoch's $5.2bn takeover of the Dow Jones group was highly contentious throughout last year as the Journal's founding Bancroft family struggled to agree on whether to sell up.
Since the deal was sealed, Murdoch has made clear that he wants the paper to diversify away from its business roots to compete with mainstream publications such as the New York Times. A sports page has appeared and there are plans for a glossy magazine.
Thomson can boast a depth of experience in business coverage. Before joining the Times in 2002, he headed the US edition of the Financial Times. He has also served as a correspondent in Beijing and Tokyo, having begun his career as a copy boy at the Herald in Melbourne in 1979.
Murdoch has wasted little time in inserting handpicked people to run the Journal. Les Hinton, a former boss of Murdoch's UK papers, is now chief executive of Dow Jones.
In an attempt to rebuild bridges with the editorial committee formed as a condition of News Corp's takeover, Hinton expressed regret for failing to consult when Thomson's predecessor left and saying it would have been "more appropriate" to do so.
Not quite
There's only one woman whose entrance into Wall Street Journal's newsroom in New York could cause such a stir. That's right - flame-haired Sun editor Rebekah Wade apparently caused quite a stir when she appeared on the newsroom floor in the Journal's New York headquarters earlier this week. Excited reporters unfamiliar with Wade's pedigree immediately googled her name and may have feared all the rumours about new boss Rupert Murdoch radically changing the paper's editorial mix were true. But they can rest easy - Monkey understands that Wade was just making a social visit to ex-Times editor and now Journal publisher Robert Thomson and her boss Rupert. But Wade's appearance in New York will do nothing to quell rumours that she will leave the Sun for a new management job before the end of the year. (source: Guardian Media Monkey )
Rupert Murdoch has promised that his Wall Street Journal will be a tidier, briefer, and more general read, one that concentrates on breaking news. And in the opening weeks of his ownership, the newspaper has largely conformed to that vision, as I commented in January. But in broadening the Journal, is Murdoch taking the newspaper's eye off the franchise, namely business news? This morning's (March 24) New York Times scoops the Journal with an Andrew Ross Sorkin Page One piece about JPMorgan negotiating to quintuple its offer for Bear Stearns. Murdoch can't be happy about getting trounced on the month's biggest business story. By softening the Journal's editorial focus, isn't he making this sort of humiliation inevitable? Imagine being the editor on the receiving end of a phone call from the rotten old bastard, demanding to know why his paper got creamed on a beat that it is supposed to own. …
The Bancroft family, who sold out Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, comes off as "dysfunctional as the Windors", writes Andrew Clark in the Guardian. Christopher Bancroft, the seller, is shown left."like a parent waiting for a baby to cry itself to sleep, Murdoch simply waited for the Bancrofts to exhaust themselves with in-fighting."
citizen journalism is red hot with Associated Content landing $10 million in financing today from Canaan Partners, and NowPublic pulling in $10.6 million in financing from Rho Ventures on Monday (this time last year, OhMyNews landed $11 million from SoftBank). This ain't small change.
It should be noted that high profile Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway (an official advisor to Facebook,) sits on Associated Content's board of directors. Longtime observers of Conway know that if "he's" is sniffing around, there's probably something interesting happening in that particular space. Nevertheless, if you are looking for clues to where media is going by tracking this week's investment patterns, you’re probably in a state of confusion right now.
Here’s a tip: Rupert Murdoch already has a huge global media portfolio and a master plan to match (he’s playing chess), piece meal deals like these citizen journalism investments are built for short term, 4-8 year impact and ROI (they are playing checkers). If your interest is in Internet media, and you don't boast the portfolio of assets of Murdoch, it’s best to keep your media investment forecast window limited to “Internet time” until you’re ready to play in Murdoch’s league.
Yet even as technological innovation mints new winners, not all of them manage to stay on top. To get a sense of just how quickly the game of king-of-the-hill goes in technology these days, consider a telling remark that Rupert Murdoch, arguably the most powerful media kingpin alive today, made just last month.
Murdoch pulled off what many consider a master stroke two years ago by acquiring the online social hangout site MySpace for what turned out to be a bargain price of $580 million. Now, just two years later, Murdoch appears to be having second thoughts about holding on to MySpace, which had been considered the cat's meow of social networking.
Reports have circulated that he'd like to swap MySpace for an ownership stake in Yahoo, and in early June he lamented to an interviewer from The Wall Street Journal that online users weren't necessarily abandoning newspapers for MySpace.
"I wish they were," Murdoch said. "They're all going to Facebook at the moment."
This definitely is worth reading, even though you may not warm to the subject.
What does a restless septuagenarian moving headlong into the digital age want with a somewhat beaten-down media property like Dow Jones, which over the years has misplayed some juicy opportunities to sell financial information in the digital world? Others may look at Dow Jones and see an excellent, world-renowned (though economically stagnant) print newspaper with a successful subscription-only website; Murdoch sees the engine of a global, interactive, multiplatform business-and-finance network that will drive his soon-to-be-launched Fox Business Channel, power up his 24-hour Sky News channel in Europe and fuel a still inchoate collection of online financial services. "We've got to lift our game tremendously," he says. "We'll sell our business news and information in print, we'll sell it to anyone who's got a cable system, and we'll sell it on the Web." Says News Corp. president Peter Chernin: "There are millions of people throughout the world joining the financial class, and the Journal is the premier financial brand. We have the size and international strength to monetize it globally."
