The Murdoch Touch: My Latest Northside SF Column

My Common Knowledge column in the latest issue of Northside San Francisco magazine:

COMMON KNOWLEDGE 

Les Hinton (photo by Sonya Abrams)

The Murdoch Touch 

By John Zipperer 

People like me, who grew up not only in newspaper-reading households but also in families of newspaper editors, almost instinctively mourn the death of any paper. Even weak papers or politically obnoxious papers still earn our respect when they expire. 

But I don’t think many people outside Britain mourned the News of the World when owner Rupert Murdoch’s son, James, announced in July that the U.K. paper would abruptly cease publication. The paper was sacrificed in the wake of a massive and ongoing scandal that has engulfed Murdoch’s media empire, the rest of the British news media, and Britain’s leaders – who have for decades looked for the support of Murdoch’s conservative papers.

read the complete article

News International Continues Trying to Change the Subject

Not to be outdone by The Wall Street Journal's whining that it was being drawn into the salacious scandal of its owner, over in the UK News International (which, like the WSJ, is owned ultimately by News Corp.) is trying desperately to change the subject.

The subject, of course, is the phone hacking scandal that has morphed into a Watergate-level threat to that country's political elite.

So how did The Sun, News International's other bottom-feeding tabloid besides the now-defunct News of the World, report on the scandal today? The only thing I saw on its website was this:

Yes, this is News International's "Leave Britney alone!" moment.

Maybe if I dug and dug I might have found something else on the paper's website about this huge scandal. But if this is the first thing one comes across when searching for the hacking scandal on that scandal sheet's website, then this is the first thing the paper's owners want you to see.

UK Phone Hacking Scandal in Taiwan Video News Treatment

Naturally, I join the entire civilized world in reveling in anything that causes Rupert Murdoch headaches.

But I think there's an even more important thing at stake. Britain's "lively" tabloid newspaper culture is sometimes defended as the cost of a free and vigorous press. But clearly there's a lot that's just criminal going on, and it's hardly a matter of hard news and civic duty to report on a celebrity's shenanigans.

Meanwhile, over in Taiwan, they're showing us what a lively news culture is really about: taking the stuffing out of people in a manner that is fearless, borderline bad taste, and sometimes downright brilliant. NMA rules.

Murdoch's Self-Defeating Plan to Take on Google

News Corp. baron Rupert Murdoch's plan to block Google from indexing his newspapers' web sites could mean The Wall Street Journal's site "could lose up to 25 percent of its traffic," reports PC Magazine.

As I noted here yesterday, Murdoch seems intent on erecting a barrier against companies linking to his articles. The ostensible reason is that he will be putting in a paid content system -- but that's a ridiculous argument. People still link to a paid article, but when they get there, they need to sign in. Has anyone ever clicked through to a Financial Times article? That's what you get. (Unless, like me, you're one of the chosen who has a subscription.) 

Daily Finance blogger Jeff Bercovici thinks Murdoch's too smart to cut off his own legs, questioning "whether he's really so angry at the 'parasites' he's prepared to drink poison just to hurt them." While I'd hope he'd gulp it down, I agree that Murdoch is anything but stupid long-term. Crass. Purveyor of yellow journalism. Debaser of culture and politics. Sure, but not long-term stupid.

Media Roundup: Murdoch, Paid News Sites, Science, Caijing, & More

The latest from the worlds of media:

• Now, this is a move by yellow-press baron Rupert Murdoch that I can get behind: He is threatening to sue Google and BBC for using material from his media empire on their sites. Google, of course, links to (mind you, links to, doesn't copy) news from around the world on its Google News service. I use it. I like it. It does not in any way prevent me from visiting media sites, and in fact I've got several dozen newspapers, TV, radio, and magazine web sites bookmarked that I visit throughout the day. (And readers of this site know that nothing has stopped me from subscribing to magazines -- in fact, I just sent in a one-year subscription order for British science fiction media mag SFX.) What I don't have bookmarked is anything from Murdoch's empire, because I think he puts politics before truth, and I think he plays in the gutter too often. Here's my point: I've often wished I could select some feature that would remove Fox News and other Murdoch sources from my Google News results. I don't want to accidentally click on them and end up helping his click-through rates. Now, Murdoch will be making this happen on his own. Hooray. Google, of course, said Murdoch can just choose not to have his newspapers indexed by Google. The FT report on his response when told about that suggests to me that he's not quite clear on the concept of links on the internet: "Asked how he reacted to the challenge of Google and others for newspapers such as his to remove their newspapers from search results, Mr Murdoch said that once they had in place the means to charge for news, 'I think we will.'" Huh? Why doesn't he remove it now? Does he know what he's talking about? 
• Mediaite has a nice collection of magazine covers featuring the Berlin Wall, which recently celebrated its 20th year of non-existence. (For more on the Wall anniversary, see here and here and here and here.)
  
• Discovery Communications -- the overlords for the Discovery family of channels -- is launching a science news web site. More science news is always a welcome move, especially coming from a group that has been as successful as Discovery at popularizing it. Bookmark its new site -- I don't think Murdoch will care!
• 
• If you remember my recent post about the upheaval at anti-corruption Chinese magazine Caijing, you might be interested to know that the pioneering editor, Hu Shuli, has officially resigned and is going to be dean of communications and design at Sun Yat-sen University. (By the way, I first learned about that from a link on Media Bistro's newsletter to a story in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. But since he doesn't want people to come to his web sites, I decided to include a link to the Forbes article instead.)
• Despite circulation of more than half a million, Metropolitan Home magazine is closing, with its December issue being its final number.

(My previous media roundup.)

Weekly Standard for Sale

Rumor has it that Rupert Murdoch's right-wing Weekly Standard political magazine is being shopped to right-wing publisher Philip Anschutz.

Billionaire Anschutz, a supporter of hard-right political and social causes, is unlikely to change the political bent of the magazine leftward, though he's also not likely to make it any more respectable. (This is the man who owns the San Francisco Examiner, a free daily in one of America's most liberal cities, which did an early and enthusiastic full-front-page endorsement of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Talk about not knowing your audience ...)

Ted Turner on Old Media, Plus Economic Troubles

CNN founder Ted Turner spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Bronstein at a Commonwealth Club program today. They covered a wide range of topics; the clip above has him talking about why newspapers "are gone."He also talks about the current financial crisis.