Shy retiree Rupert Murdoch has been making his presence felt in New York at the Wall Street Journal, and with a bid for Newsday.
Jack Shafer will take him on tomorrow but today remarks of an anecdote from the Newsweek profile:
It’s a great image, one that expands Murdoch’s distended legend all the way to bloated: Murdoch, godfather of media, holding court and dispensing favors; Pearlstine and Huey, princes of media themselves, begging the great man not to cast a News Corp. spell on them and turn them into rats; Murdoch startling the pair by saying, “Done,” like a monarch, dictator, or gang leader.
Murdoch is so tempting that he lures Nick Denton into a rare moment of seriousness:
Rupert Murdoch may be the personification of the press baron, but he’s never had anything like the influence in the US that his array of newspapers and television networks brought in the UK.
His solitary US newspaper title, the New York Post, has given Murdoch influence over New York City and State politics, but precious little juice in Washington, DC.
Murdoch has never had the access to the White House, even under George Bush, that he had to Number 10 Downing Street during Tony Blair’s tenure as UK prime minister.
Fox News is powerful, of course, but the cable news network is too reflexively conservative to provide any real influence over the liberals who are likely to run national politics, and appoint regulators, over the next political cycle.
By creating a national title in the Wall Street Journal, and taking control of about half the New York newspaper market, Murdoch or his successor should be able to withstand any political effort to break up his empire.
Look at the UK: the Labour party, which long sought to curtail News Corporation’s media power, has entirely given up; about a decade ago, Murdoch passed the critical threshold beyond which he became untouchable.
By creating a similarly interlocking network of television and newspaper operations in the US, he can achieve a similar result on a grander scale — if competition authorities allow.
And former Wall Street spreadsheet siren, the gloriously named Lauren Rich Fine (which I read every time as — Rich? Get Over It!) excels herself:
Rupert Murdoch is –
a) addicted to newspapers,
b) addicted to power,
c) needs to break the rules, or
d) all of the above.
Rich Fine has a couple of interesting observations in her piece.
On the WSJ re-positioning:
As the paper migrates towards more of a general interest publication, and more of a direct competitor to the New York Times, one can wonder whether it will remain as relevant to its core readers.
And, sharpening the knife:
One also has to wonder if his plans for the WSJ are really in the interest of his shareholders.
Before sticking it to KRM:
If I were a NWS [News Corp.] shareholder, I would be angry. The average NWS shareholder doesn’t own it for its newspapers; in fact, they likely own it despite the newspapers.
They own it for the promise of digital and other NWS businesses. Newsday wouldn’t appear to further the digital interests, the area in which the WSJ competes online is crowded. So, perhaps, it is all personal in the end.
But the wound? No more than an acupuncturist’s needle…
