murdoch

In a move that makes him seem a bit like Dr. Evil wanting to be paid one hundred billion dollars for Austin Powers' ransom, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has said that he will charge for all the online content associated with the newspapers and television stations he owns.

It's a goal that some in the digital-media space will bill as ludicrous--and some as inevitable.

The Financial Times reported the news Thursday, adding that Murdoch had spotted "some good signs of life" in the battered advertising sector.

He's already got most of The Wall Street Journal, … Read more

PASADENA, Calif.--News Corp. digital chief Jonathan Miller said Thursday that MySpace needs a culture shift that focuses on spotting changes in consumer behavior and adapting more quickly.

"One of the things about this medium is you have to continually develop product," Miller said, speaking at the Brainstorm: Tech conference here. "You can't just put something on the shelf."

For MySpace, that means focusing on doing a few things well. Asked about Rupert Murdoch's recent comments that MySpace should focus on entertainment, Miller said: "When you get involved in companies that need to … Read more

The waning prospects of MySpace, once the dominate social network, are pushing parent company News Corp. to make some startling moves.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., said he plans to reshape MySpace into an "entertainment portal."

The Journal reported that MySpace will enable the site's users, the number of which is quickly shrinking, to access entertainment and related information. Murdoch, however, didn't offer the paper any details about what this new entertainment focus would include.

The statements, made at the Allen & Company Conference in Sun Valley, … Read more

So the Googlies are, allegedly, gnashing and wailing.

Their ears, their nostrils, even their fully formed eyebrows are twitching beyond all human control.

Though I am not one of those who necessarily subscribes to the idea that Googlies ever have extreme emotions, the rumor is that they are in a fizzy tizzy. Because of Bing, the new search fragrance from Microsoft.

According to a report, Google's Sergey Brin has ordered some of his finest brains to take Bing apart as if it were a secretly smuggled advance exemplar of the Palm Pre.

He wants to know how it thinks. … Read more

Cooley needs a cigarette after a personal moment related to the wonder of band printers and the glory of dot-matrix. Who knew? We also have a good long talk about how soon physical papers will disappear and teach Rafe all about the Konami Code.

Murdoch: Web sites to charge for content http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/07/murdoch.web.content/

Analyst: AT&T likely to cut $69 iPhone service plan by $10 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10235782-94.html

AT&T, VZW are no longer immune to the recession – … Read more

So should News Corp. buy Twitter? That's what Vanity Fair columnist and pundit Michael Wolff speculated this week in an article on Newser.com, the aggregation site he founded.

"There may not be anything less than Twitter that can distract Wall Street from News Corp.'s stubborn and, at this point, unnatural newspaper fetish," Wolff wrote, "and, as well, convince it, for one last hurrah, that (CEO Rupert Murdoch) isn't...well, gone."

The catalyst for Wolff's recommendation was the recent hire of former AOL chief Jon Miller as head of News Corp.'s … Read more

I spent some of my vacation with Rupert Murdoch.

I lay him down on his back in the sand and said: "Sir, please tell me a little about yourself." His words, translated often very sympathetically by his authorized biographer Michael Wolff in a book entitled The Man Who Owns The News, were quite picturesque.

As I lay glistening in the heat, Mr. Wolff shined a light on MySpace's owner: "All right, he's not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he's retreated a bit). And there was the … Read more

Michael Wolff, whose new, lascivious Rupert Murdoch bio The Man Who Owns The News has taken the New York media industry by storm, stirred up some social-networking class warfare in an interview Monday with BusinessWeek's Jon Fine.

"If you're on MySpace now, you're a (expletive) cretin. And you're not only a (expletive) cretin, but you're poor," said Wolff, whose previous book Burn Rate chronicled dot-com excess in the late '90s and who openly attests to hating the word "blog."

"Nobody who has beyond an eighth grade level of education is … Read more

With newspapers cutting back, and predictions of even worse times ahead, Rupert Murdoch said the profession may still have a bright future, if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers.

"My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the Internet is this: It's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers," said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive … Read more