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Murdoch will have not of that. He told News Corp.'s Fox Business last week that The Daily is his "No. 1 most exciting project."
An independent journal about the Gannett Co. and the news industry's digital transition
Monday, November 22, 2010
USAT | Handicapping Murdoch's 'Daily' iPad app
As the USA Today aircraft carrier slowly turns toward the iPad, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is rapidly pouring $30 million into The Daily, an iPad-centered newspaper with a staff of 100, set to appear at the beginning of next year. New York Times media columnist David Carr has some doubts, however.
"As innovative as it seems, The Daily will be a newspaper, an ancient motif on a modern device,'' Carr writes today. "It will be produced into the evening, and then a button will be pushed and it will be 'printed' for the next morning. There will be updates — the number of which is still under discussion — but not at the velocity or with the urgency of a news website."
Murdoch will have not of that. He told News Corp.'s Fox Business last week that The Daily is his "No. 1 most exciting project."
Murdoch will have not of that. He told News Corp.'s Fox Business last week that The Daily is his "No. 1 most exciting project."
18 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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I'm looking forward to seeing it.
ReplyDeleteWhile we transform, Murdoch continues to kick our ass - what a surprise.
ReplyDeleteFor an old guy, Murdoch has remarkable agility adjusting to changes. Yes, he makes mistakes -- sometimes big ones -- but he seems to come out on top afterwards. I think the WSJ is better after his purchase, and certainly isn't as stodgy as it was. His foray into magazine publishing with the Weekly Standard has been far less successful. But Fox certainly looks like a winner. At least he is doing something.
ReplyDeleteHis huge MySpace investment is turning into a multimillion-dollar loser.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how Murdoch does it, but his huge losses just seem to wash over him with no consequences. He's carried the London Times at a loss for years, offset by the London Sun, which he launched and now is the largest British paper. He carries losers like the Weekly Standard for years apparently without blinking.
ReplyDeleteHow much red ink is The NY Post leaking these days? Somewhere around $25 million annually?
ReplyDeleteFrom his view, I think he feels he has the NYT surrounded, from the top with the WSJ, and from the bottom with the NYPost. He thinks strategically like that.
ReplyDeleteThose are tiny, tiny parts of News Corp. Even the WSJ is a relative few percentage points of NWS' overall revenue. He's got Fox TV, which has American Idol, plus Fox TV and The Simpsons, and Fox Studios, which has had hits like "Avatar." The big juggernaut is Fox News.
ReplyDeleteYes, Jim, but I think he's a newspaperman at heart and he enjoys the newspaper wars. I saw this in London, where he made the London Telegraph the target. The Telegraph had a lock on the middle class audience until he started the Sun to attack it from the bottom, and bought the London Times to take the Telegraph on from the top. It's working, too, as the Telegraph's profits are dwindling. He's been helped out by the Guardian, which dropped its Manchester base and now considers itself a left-of-center national paper. It is certainly not as left as it used to be, which has taken ground from the Telegraph. Murdoch is very clever and very patient.
ReplyDeleteMurdoch takes chances. USAT will hold months of meetings on if they should hold meetings to take chances. Then they'll appoint vice presidents and warmed over editors with no ideas to leade those meetings. Finally,they'll hold meetings. Spend months and months "brainstorming." Then announce a plan. Months later, when the plan is announced, they'll wait for weeks before implementing it. Then implement the big plan without a framework for it to work. Oh, and reconstitute the same crew to oversee it. Before laying more people off as the second leg of the transformation begins.
ReplyDeleteStreamling makes sense only at the upper end of the management structure. Unfortunatley, that never happens at Gannett or USA Today. Never.
ReplyDelete9:39 - you forgot to mention the hundreds of conference calls in between the meetings in order to discuss the meetings. Otherwise, you nailed it.
ReplyDeleteMurdoch as balls. We have meetings.
9:39 Summed up Gannet *PERFECTLY*. Never seen a company drag its feel this much. I have no clue what this "Transformation" at USAT is even about anymore other than....we lost a lot of good people last month.
ReplyDeleteTablet based newspapers are the future. Gannet needs to wake up to that fact ASAP.
Have the new legions of vice presidents started work yet? Haven't see one single tangible thing they've created since they were introduced to us at Hunke charade.
ReplyDelete12:52 Murdoch is such a great guys his kids have all gotten out of the business. You hate Gannett at all cost lemmings crack me up. Ask all the NY state Murdock employees laid off last year how much they love him!
ReplyDelete7:41 - I wasn't commenting on Murdoch's benevolence or his relationship with his kids. And since when is Gannett so wonderful?
ReplyDeleteMy point was Murdoch has guts. He takes chances. He doesn't sit around for 9 months shuffling the deck chairs. He puts real money against real business opportunities and usually does very well. There is no crisis of management there.
I'll take the agenda and smarts of Al N. before handing a green card to this greedy right-wing new media baron...
ReplyDeleteMURDOCH THE OIL IMPERIALIST:
Murdoch has acknowledged his major rationale for supporting the Iraq invasion: oil. While both American and British politicians strenuously deny the significance of oil in the war, the Guardian of London notes, "Murdoch wasn't so reticent. He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil." [Guardian, 2/17/03]
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MURDOCH THE BUSH SUPPORTER:
Murdoch told Newsweek before the war, Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn. I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1…One senses he is a man of great character and deep humility." [Newsweek, 2/17/03]
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MURDOCH THE WAR MONGER:
The Guardian reported before the war Murdoch gave "his full backing to war, praising George Bush as acting 'morally' and 'correctly' and describing Tony Blair as 'full of guts'" for his support of the war. Murdoch said just before the war, "We can't back down now – I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly." [New York Times, 4/9/03; Guardian, 2/12/03]
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MURDOCH THE DEFENDER OF REPRESSIVE REGIMES: The last governor of Hong Kong before it was handed back to China, Chris Patten, signed a contract to write his memoirs with Murdoch's publishing company, HarperCollins. But according to the Evening Standard, when "Murdoch heard that the book, East and West, would say unflattering things about the Chinese leadership, with whom he was doing satellite TV business, the contract was cancelled. It caused a furor in the press - except, of course, in the Murdoch papers, which barely mentioned the story." According to BusinessWeek, internal memos surfaced suggesting the canceling of the contract was motivated by "corporate worries about friction with China, where HarperCollins' boss, Rupert Murdoch, has many business interests." [Evening Standard, 8/13/03; BusinessWeek, 9/15/98]
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MURDOCH THE APOLOGIST FOR DICTATORSHIPS: Time Magazine reported that while Murdoch is supposedly "a devout anti-Soviet and anti-communist" he "became bewitched by China in the early '90s." In an effort to persuade Chinese dictators that he would never challenge their behavior, Murdoch "threw the BBC off Star TV" (his satellite network operating in China) after BBC aired reports about Chinese human rights violations. Murdoch argued the BBC "was gratuitously attacking the regime, playing film of the massacre in Tiananmen Square over and over again." In 1998 Chinese President Jiang Zemin praised Murdoch for the "objective" way in which his papers and television covered China. [Source: Time Magazine, 10/25/99]
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That's the tip of the iceberg
Rupert's no Al.
I won't dispute your characterization of Murdoch. Problem is, he's in charge, and Neuharth's out to pasture.
ReplyDelete