Melinda Beck, a journalist with The Wall Street Journal welcomed me as a psychological expert and contributor to her article, Drowning in Email, Photos, Files? Hoarding Goes Digital. The extent to which technology is infiltrating our lives is taking a toll on our psychological well-being, and some of us are particularly at risk. This article skillfully discusses the development, associated symptoms and treatment of digital hoarding.
An excerpt from the article:
Christina Villarreal, a cognitive-behavioral therapist in Oakland, Calif., says she has clients in the tech industry—young men mostly—who spend so much time and money amassing collections of music or games or gadgets that they withdraw from the real world. “They can’t pay their rent or buy food because they have to have this latest piece of equipment to support their habit,” says Dr. Villarreal. She notes that hoarding often starts out as a way to feel good or fill an emptiness in life, but it leaves sufferers even more isolated. She helps clients relearn basic social skills and find other enjoyable activities instead. Advertisement
How do mental health experts currently determine when digital collecting becomes 'digital hoarding' and dysfunctional in a person?
Psychologists like myself are likely to diagnose someone as dysfunctional when their digital collecting behavior begins to impact multiple areas of their functioning in the following ways:
occupational and/or academic demands are no longer consistently met due to the quanitity of time spent researching, collecting and organizing digital devices and/or media social withdrawal and/or isolation patterns emerge with friends and/or family social relationships begin to deteriorate and/or suffer negative consequences physical functioning/self care habits show decline, such as neglecting regular exercise, poor dietary choices that result in significant weight gain or loss sleep deprivation poorly managed finances/debt as a result of digital/technology driven spending habits difficulty stopping or reducing their collection of digital devices and/or media files that go largely unused noticeable changes in mental functioning that result in symptoms of depression, obsessive/compulsive anxiety, or substance abuse poor insight/inability to see the connection between their collecting habits and the negative consequences of their behavioral choices
What kind of treatment, if any, helps someone with digital hoarding problems?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based form of psychotherapy that can help to alleviate negative symptoms and improve overall functioning. A well planned treatment regimen may include:
Systematic Desensitization also known as Graduated Exposure Therapy assessing the need for psychotropic medication to reduce symptoms of obsessive thoughts and behaviors, anxiety and/or depression identifying/increasing other enjoyable activities into daily life increasing social opportunities for support social skill building when necessary developing and maintaining healthy self-care for diet, exercise and sleep patterns support for debt management Dr. Christina Villarreal is a licensed clinical psychologist in Oakland, CA. For further questions or referrals email her at christina.villarreal@gmail.com
When we first established Sports Business Simulations, we launched the new site on June 22, 2003 and got just three unique visitors all day long. I had the stupid idea that if you build it -- the website with sim games -- they will come. I realized within one day I was totally wrong.
In my quest to find answers to improve our traffic I discovered for myself an event that I at first wasn't sure I should go to, but then was glad I did. That event was Ad-Tech, which takes place Tuesday through Thursday of this week at Moscone Center West..
Where Web 2.0 conferences are more about glitz and gitter and parties, Ad-Tech is more about nuts-and-bolts website marketing and promotion. It's where you find affiliate marketers and shopping cart software makers and website ad creators actively trying to find a fit with you and your web business.
I'm not taking anything away from Web 2.0, which is a fantastic networking event, but Ad-Tech is a place to do deals for your web business that can help you in some way. But if it's your first Ad-Tech and you don't have an understanding of what digital marketing is or how to separate the good vendors from the "ok" ones, I have some advice for you.
Just take the time to go to the keynotes speeches, look around, and get to know the vendors. Get a bag and stuff it with material. And learn who wants to deal with you and who acts like you're gum shoe. I'm serious, because that happened to me two years ago. One company that places ads on websites like mine just made me stand around waiting for five minutes (think about it) to talk to someone; when they finally realized I was an Internet site builder and operator and not the Roto-Roter man, they talked to me, and even then they didn't take me seriously.
"Well, we only deal with people who have blogs and websites", the rep said. No kidding. You can imagine where it went from there. After all, why would he assume I don't have a blog or a website, rather than a lot of them?
Huh?
Now I was dressed business casual so no problem there, right? And here's where the matter of race could come into play, right? Because what logical reason would anyone have for ignoring me? None. Then they would say, "you're playing the race card" to which I would respond, "racism is a form of rejection without reason other than skin color; what logical reason did you have for rejecting me" -- in fact, that's what happened. (Hey, women go through this crap, too!) I gave them a piece of my mind and then walked away. I found another ad placement company to work with.
That's the beauty of Ad-Tech and a good reason why you should "kick the tires" of the personalities first. Learn who you want to deal with and don't want to deal with. If that example I gave happens to you, don't argue as I did, just walk away.
The other good reason to check out Ad-Tech SF is just to learn what the state of the art of thinking in digital media is. This year's event looks exciting, as Jimmy Whales, the founder of Wikipedia will speak at a keynote adress, as well Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, and Jason Kilar the CEO of Hulu (an awesome site). There's also the AdSense Publisher Forum on Wednesday, which is an event for all of my friends who I tell "You've got to sign up for Google AdSense" so they can place ads on their blogs.
Also, go to as many parties as you can. For example there the "Advertising 2.0" party Tuesday night at the "W" Hotel, who's lobby is the "in" place to hang for the tech community at these events. And there's the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden, which is a must, because affiliate marketers are without a doubt the most fun folks in the digital media industry. You'll find many of them are from places like Vegas or Florida, or Colorado, and are an interesting mix of "smart" and "party", which makes their events smart parties to attend. But to be sure, according to the AdTech folks there's the ad:tech SFAMA Mixer, Digital Social Media Networking and Oldtimers Foundation parties to check out, too.
So, go to Ad-Tech SF and follow my instructions, I guarantee you'll have a blast and learn a lot.
As for me, I had to travel to Atlanta for family matters so I will not be able to attend but in order to blog about it, I've asked my friend Molly Fuller, the founder of the cooking class company "Hands On Gourmet", to go in my place and use Twitter to tweet what she sees and her impressions. That material will be used for my blog. It will be great to get her view of Ad-Tech as a first-timer.
What i don't get -- someone explain it to me -- is how some of these guys like now-former AOL head John Miller get to be the new CEO of Fox News Digital (a new title made for him) when Miller's never made a website! Plus, according to ValleyWag, they say he's, well, not really all that and a bag of chips.
See my point?
I can name lawyer after lawyer who was gotten to run a digital media corporation and none of them would be able to write the code for an anchor link to save their lives. Ands god forbid you ask him to code a basic webpage!
Why? How can a person like Miller claim to be an innovator in digital media if he doesn't know how to make the one thing that defines digital media: the website? Is it that the people who select these guys -- and they generally are men -- don't know the stuff and so select people who are like them: without a real Internet clue? If you don't understand how to make a website to make money for yourself, then you have no business in digital media. Period.
What's the deal here? Why the talent gap between people in charge and those who make the digital business go?
My charge is if the CEO can't make digital media, then the CEO does not know what to ask for to make their digital media business work better.
For the first time, according to Nielsen, CNN came in third place in cable news program ratings behind Fox and MSNBC. CNN had 1.14 million viewers in March, compared with 1.16 million for MSNBC and 2.3 million for Fox News. Some say the reason is Fox is conservative; it's really their focus on women anchors with short skirts.
So Fox could be liberal as heck and still have the same ratings if they had the same "sex sells" strategy. There have been a lot of Fox female anchors doing the showing of a lot of leg: E.D. Hill, Ainsley Earhardt , Linda Vester, Gretchen Carlson, and Catherine Herridge to name some of them.
That's a lot of women, and I'm sure I've left someone's name off the list without intention. The point is, it's too much of a habit to ignore, thus it's part of the high ratings, because it builds expectations that a viewer will see women in short skirts, especially in the morning.
Is this a bad thing? Well, yes and no. Look, we can't deny that above all else, television is a visual medium. It's not radio at all. So people react to what they see. Moreover, we're wired to reproduce -- people forget that -- so visual cues that appeal to our sexual nature will get more attention than those that don't.
That's a fact.
I can't blame Fox for this. But I can blame Fox for coupling it with some lame reporting. Much of it's so biased I don't watch it at all. I flip between CNN and MSNBC. And CNN has some attractive female anchors, but they don't present them like Fox does. If they did, I hate to write this, but CNN would overtake Fox for the ratings lead.
"Phishing" is the act of sending a "safe" looking email that asks you to give out sensitive information: your username and password. That practice has found it's way to Twitter. Here's what you should do if it happens to you.
One major casualty of the release of the book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McCllellan was the White House Press Corp and ABC News (so far).
CNN's Jessica Yellin, who was employed by CNN during the initial years of the Iraq War, dropped a bomb of her own on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, when she revealed that her news was "fixed" -- my term -- by ABC News execs, who killed negative Bush stories and generally made her feel pressured to make positive stories about President Bush while his approval ratings were high.
Yellin says so in this video:
Charlie Gibson, the host of Good Morning America, essentially but unknowingly confirmed Yellin when he said this:
I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System [group giggles]. I think the questions were asked. . . . I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials for asking questions they didn't feel comfortable with. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions.
This bit of a revelation is damaging to the overall credibility of the mainstream media and calls into question the state of American Media. It may very well be that we've been the victims of fixed news coverage all along and are entering a new era of telling the actual story via new media. But for the present I think Yellin's revelations are stunning and I'm not sure what the fallout will be, but I do think the FCC should look into this ASAP. It seems Noam Chomsky was right after all.
This video presents sights, sounds, and people at Ad-Tech San Francisco, a digital marketing convention annually held at Moscone Center in San Francisco. What I noticed about Ad-Tech this year is that there was less space used overall but more people, and far more people of color than ever before.
What does Social Media Marketing mean to you? Well I was asked that question at the San Francisco Ad Tech conference and gave this answer, with a twist.
Ok, I warn you. This is a rant of massive proportions and designed to get my dander up for the day. Here it is.
I'm sick and tired of meeting San Francisco Digital Media and Ad Execs who work for or with Linkedin, AOL, Facebook, and other once nice little startups that suddenly became large companies yet don't know the first thing about coding a website, or don't even use state-of-the-art digital communications tools like Twitter, or even know how to make a YouTube channel, let alone upload a video to it....and will not admit it.
These folks are nice enough, but they're doing no one any favors at all and need a massive crash course in online tech, yet work in it! I realized this after a trip to the St. Regis Hotel on March 20th of this fine year 2008 to make a video for a kind of industry networkng group called "SF-BIG" or San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group.
Now the video was a volunteer matter on my part and part of the agreement was that the video is mine, not their's and so I make it and post it and use it. I mean heck, if I'm not going to get an SF-BIG membership out of the deal, then I've got to protect what I do, right?
Which also means I get to rant, big time.
What I saw in the event discussion -- you can seee the video here after this break --
is a collection of 250 people, with maybe three Black faces inluding mine, and of which the vast majority were not tech-types, yet have some say over which tech-type gets what job if a tech-type dared to wade into their shallow end of the pool. Melinda Mettler , who represents the Academy of Art School of Advertising, made a flip set of remarks, indicating a near dislike forthe very students she's supposed to be trying to find jobs for. She says they're too cool, "life's a party, man."
Maybe it's because the tech-heads know that their real "job" is to go out and make their own company and not work for another large corporate bureaucracy full of game-players and back-stabbers. Maybe they know that the people doing the hiring don't know what they know anyway, so why go there?
Melinda says that tech-types don't want to leave San Francisco because it's too nice. No. The real reason is that the venture capitalists who would fund new firms are most likely to be here than in, say, New York or Chicago. That's why.
Watch the video. The only person who gets a pass from me is recruiter David Greenwald, and that's it. As far as I'm concerned, SF-BIG would do its members a favor if it had a panel on blogs and new media and coding and optimization, ....and a test. Call it a tech industry I.Q. test.
The lecture would be necessary, because as of this writing, most of the SF-BIG members would flunk the I.Q. test.
The San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group or "SF-BIG" asked me to make this video of their "Reach" event held March 20th, 2008 at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. The topic was on what ad firms look for in digital ad talent and what advantage -- if any -- San Francisco has as a center of digital media. The panelists included Melinda Mettler (Academy of Art School of Advertising), Alyson Hyder (Avenue A | Razorfish); Bernie Albers (Federated Media); and David Greenwald, (i2iplacement). In all it was a great event and the breakfast was terrific.
IF THERE WERE ANY DOUBTS that we were back into a new, digital media economy, they were laid to rest Monday when the price of Google's shares topped $600 for the first time, giving it a price to earnings multiple of 49.54, and a market capitalization greater than the three biggest traditional media companies - Time Warner, Walt Disney Co., and News Corp. - combined. Based on Monday's closing price of $609.62 per share, Google has a market cap of $190.28 billion.
Based on their closing prices, traditional media's Big 3 - Time Warner ($71.23 billion), Walt Disney Co. ($68.50 billion) and News Corp. ($49.00 billion) - equaled a combined $188.73 billion.
Looked at another way, Google's market value is now 3.6 times greater than all of Madison Avenue's publicly traded ad agency holding companies - WPP ($17.72 billion), Omnicom ($16.43 billion), Publicis ($8.57 billion), Interpublic ($4.89 billion), Aegis ($2.96 billion), Havas ($2.484 billion), and MDC Partners ($274 billion) - combined.
The relative valuations of the new and traditional media companies are more than just symbolic. They signal investor confidence that allow companies to leverage their share value in stock-based acquisitions that can help companies grow even bigger and more dominant over time. And if Google's high price/earnings multiple seems bubblish, it wasn't apparent to experts on Wall Street.
Analysts from investment giants like Piper Jaffray and Thompson Financial raised their expectations for Google last week, as the company moved closer to releasing its latest quarterly earnings on October 18. Due in part to improved revenue forecasts, analysts at Bear Stearns, for example, have pegged the search giant's stock to reach $625 per share by the end of 2007--setting a target price of $700 dollars.
Google's share price has grown along with its share of search, and push into areas like contextual advertising, and hosted email, calendaring and publishing applications. Shares initially sold at $85 when the company went public in August 2004--and had closed at about $460 by the end of last year.
The search giant's progress has even driven some industry analysts (namely Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget) to forecast shares to hit $2,000 over the next few decades--but this quarter's all-important earnings release will most certainly determine the stock's performance for the near term.
Media Consumers Finally Saying, `Enough Already!' Begin Cutting Claims On Time
By JESSICA MARSDEN | Courant Staff Writer August 8, 2007
Americans' appetite for time in front of the computer, iPod or television may finally be on the wane, after almost a decade during which our media consumption grew steadily.
Consumers spent slightly less time with media - including both traditional and digital offerings, in print and onscreen - in 2006, compared with 2005. It was the first decline since 1997, private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson reported Tuesday.
We now log an average of 9.7 hours each day consuming media. Some experts say we're at the saturation point.
"There's only so much time available to add more kinds of media," University of Hartford communications Professor Jack Banks said. "At some point, something's gotta give."
That something is likely to be traditional, ad-supported media like broadcast television and printed newspapers, which the report found are enjoying less attention from consumers as emerging media take up more of their time.
The 3,530 hours that the average consumer spent with media in 2006 - a whopping 40 percent of all hours, including sleep time - represented a 0.5 percent drop from 2005. Over the previous decade, media usage typically increased 1 percent to 3 percent a year, said Leo Kivijarv, vice president for research at PQ Media, which produced the report with VSS.
The term media was widely defined, including TV, newspapers, movies, books, music and video games, not to mention the wide world of the Internet.
Much of the previous decade's growth in media consumption stemmed from new technologies that generated new excitement. Kivijarv said. For example, consumers replacing VCRs with DVD players tended to spend more time with the new devices.
The slowdown in media consumption in 2006 represents a saturation point, Kivijarv said, but that doesn't mean Americans are waning in their hunger for the offerings on the vast media menu. Rather, he suggested, "on-demand" digital technologies allow consumers to be more efficient. Instead of leafing through several sections of a newspaper, readers are able to call up the two or three articles of interest to them, almost immediately on a newspaper's website, he said.
"Somebody goes online, they're very specific for what they're looking for," he said.
In a landscape as broad as American media, there could be plenty of room for growth in some areas even as others are saturated. For example, we could be unable to digest more active, leisure-time media at home, but have time available for more at the office, said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.
The VSS report notes that media use at businesses and government offices - for legitimate work purposes - increased by about 3 percent in 2006, to an average 260 hours per employee. With a 40-hour week totaling 2,000 hours a year, that represents room for growth.
Then there is the matter of procrastination at work, as computers bring a festival of time-wasting opportunities that expand as old-line media jump online, Thompson said. Now that TV networks have started to offer their programming online, you can spend a very long lunch hour catching up on the latest episode of "Grey's Anatomy."
Last year, Thompson said, "was a big year for being able to watch TV at work and get away with it. You could never have dragged a portable TV set into your cubicle."
Young people are "probably at 100 percent media saturation, even counting sleeping," he said. Multitasking intersperses media consumption with the rest of life, and portable technology makes it possible to bring those habits anywhere, he said.
The report draws a sharp distinction between media that are mostly paid for by advertisers, such as broadcast TV and print journalism, and subscriber-funded media, including cable TV, video games and some websites. The first group, the heart of traditional mass media, is declining. The latter group is growing.
Advertisers have already followed audiences into new media, and that trend will gain speed. By 2011, the VSS report estimates, the Internet will surpass newspapers as the largest medium for advertising.
In a move that's rocked the media world, Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp, which in turn is the holder of organizations like Fox, My Space, Direct TV, and of course a dizzying number of tabloids, has just purchased the Dow Jones Corporation, which in turn has the famous newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
Murdock has made no secret of his desire to have the Wall Street Journal in his basket of media companies. To better understand what Mudock intends to do, two Wall Street Journal reporters sat down to talk with the media mogul about the then-in-progress deal to by Dow Jones and by relation, the WSJ. But before I get to that, here's my take on what Murdock's purchase of the WSJ means.
Quite simply, I don't think he's going to try to mess with the journalistic integrity of the paper. But I do think the WSJ's Internet presence will improve dramatically, with (perhaps) blogs and social networks and perhaps video. It's at the very least a logical move. PBS Commentator Bill Moyers has a take as well, one more onminous than my own. Here it is on video:
Now, here's the WSJ interview, which I took from WSJ.com.
WSJ: We have a lot of things to ask you about in your whole career -- it would be a good opportunity for you to talk about your role as a newspaper proprietor and your philosophy and how that has evolved over time.
Mr. Murdoch: I've been a newspaper person since I was a baby, practically. I found it riveting. I just love newspapers, and that's not any exaggeration. And the frustration of my life has been as the company has grown bigger, and we've taken opportunities, I've had less time to pay any detailed attention to them.
We've just had two miserable weeks or three… doing budgets for every single division of the company.
But my father wrote in his will that… he had gone to the trouble to buy [the paper in Adelaide, Australia, the Adelaide News]… so that I would have the opportunity to do good. The quote is available. I've tried to bring up my children with that sense, too. And none of them, certainly the three middle ones, have never thought of a career other than somewhere in media, just because they saw the sort of the life I've led and the excitement of it. And they're all very hard workers, so I'm pleased about that.
How do I see newspapers? You have the opportunity to make a difference. But any difference we make today is providing more choice. We've kept papers alive for years or part of them… took the losses for 15 years or more to develop franchises to give people alternatives.
We've done it with the Australian, the Times in London -- and no one can say that they're not today very, very fine newspapers.
WSJ: Some have described that in the '60s, you were in the newsroom of the Australian and talking to reporters about a story and saying, "That was a great story today and why don't you look at this angle?" I talked to somebody who said to me you're like an enthusiastic news editor who sometimes would get an idea in his head, and it's sometimes hard to persuade him the story wasn't there.
Mr. Murdoch: [Laughter] That's probably true. A long time ago. That was 40 years ago when we started the Australian. And I managed to spend for a few months, about half my time there. Even there I spent half the time on the phone talking to people at other parts of the company. We made plenty of mistakes trying to find our way at the Australian. Plenty of mistakes.
WSJ: At the New York Post you were editor in chief. Wasn't that your title when you first bought it in '76 or so?
Mr. Murdoch: I was going to say it is now, but it's not. It has been at some stage.
WSJ: Is it a sign of how much more involved you were?
Mr. Murdoch: Look, when a paper starts to go bad and go down the drain, the buck stops with me. Shareholders don't ring the editor, they ring me. And that once or twice has led to very unhappy but necessary decisions. I made mistakes but had to change them. It's been very seldom.
WSJ: Can you specify which ones you mean? Do you mean Harold Evans, who you made editor of the Times of London when you purchased the paper in 1981?
Mr. Murdoch: Yes, specifically Harold. He'd made a great name for himself at the Sunday Times…. I was a big admirer of what he had done there, to put that sort of energy in the Times. And he has great expertise in many things -- a great editor of a story. I was warned by two of the national directors to have him not to do it. And it's too long a story, but it ended up A) costs out of control B) the paper changing its policy day by day -- atomic submarines and whatever they were talking about... and the issues were then we had which cabinet ministers had been at lunch which day. Harry is not a strong… I don't want to say libelous things. It ended up with a journalist coming to me and saying, "Look, this can't go on" and that "more than half of us are going to take a walk," and so we had to part company. And he decided to write a book with I would say a tremendous number of inventions. It's OK. People feel the need to justify themselves. Harry was and is remains a very gifted person in many ways … I don't want to defame Harry at all.
WSJ: I want to ask about the independent board in London. You said in your letter to the Bancrofts that you would set up a structure that was "exactly along the same lines" as you did at the Times and Sunday Times. You have now mentioned a couple of times Harry Evans and the independent national directorate. I want to ask you that because one of those rules that you set up was that you would not get involved in staffing decisions. That the board would have veto power over the hiring and firing of the top editor.
Mr. Murdoch: That's right.
WSJ: We talked to a guy named Fred Emery. Emery says that you called him into your office back in March of '82, said that you were considering firing Harold Evans. He said he was shocked and reminded you of this promise that was embedded in the bylaws of the paper, that the independent boards had to approve this. He says you told him that "God, you don't take all of that seriously, do you?" And he said "of course we do" and that you laughed and said, "Why wouldn't I give instructions to the Times, when I give instructions to editors all around the world." What is your response to that?
Mr. Murdoch: I don't remember. I do remember actually a conversation with Fred and it did not go that way at all, according to my memory. That he was extremely critical of Harry, and in fact, I did go to the national directors before I spoke to Harry.
WSJ: I want to ask you about the structure that existed there.
Mr. Murdoch: That still exists. I understand you've checked up with the directors themselves and checked up with the editors.
WSJ: Those who would speak to us. A number of people that we interviewed who were editors at the Times not just in the Harry Evans era, but even after, up to 10 years, describe the board as ineffective. They can't really think of anything it's ever done.
Mr. Murdoch: I guess they never had any complaints to take to the board.
WSJ: We know of at least one complaint that the board handled that I spoke with a director about.
Mr. Murdoch: Really? What was that?
WSJ: Jonathan Mirsky who was working in Hong Kong.
Mr. Murdoch: I wasn't at any board meeting about that. But I know who Mirsky is.
WSJ: He complained publicly that his stories were being spiked. He told us he didn't even know there was a board. I spoke with one of the board members who said because they learned about that, they decided to investigate. He said they called up the then editor of the Times, asked him if he received outside pressure to spike these stories. He said, "No, I did it on my own." And they said, "OK, that's it. That's the extent of our mandate. We're only responsible for protecting the editor."
Mr. Murdoch: The editors decide if stories aren't that good -- they decide that about a lot of stories they spike.
WSJ: Doesn't that suggest the board's power is quite limited?
Mr. Murdoch: Not at all.
WSJ: Since you pick the editor.
Mr. Murdoch: They have to approve. And they interview the editor before he's appointed.
WSJ: They didn't even interview Mirsky.
Mr. Murdoch: You talk to Robert Thomson [Editor of the Times of London] about Mirsky. He's got very strong opinions on the subject. You see what he has written about China in the last two or three months.
WSJ: Do you feel the board has been effective over the past 26 years?
Mr. Murdoch: They do what they're meant to do. They meet four times a year, maybe six times.
WSJ: Four times.
Mr. Murdoch: Four times. OK. You know more about it than I do…. It's quite a large board, but within it, there are six what we call national directors. They are people I haven't met before they've been on.… But basically people I don't know ... They have the right to say, 'No, we don't want that person appointed to the national directorate with us.' They pretty much pick themselves. That's my understanding. Maybe we submit names and they pick one of them or something. And they meet with the editors, the two editors, I believe, separately. There is a bigger board of which they are part of, and they get reports about circulation and trading balances and so on. That goes on for about an hour. Also on the board are two journalist directors that the editors choose, who report back to them what's been said.
WSJ: Are you on the board as well?
Mr. Murdoch: Yeah, but I don't often get there. I'm here.
WSJ: So there are two journalist directors picked by the editors?
Mr. Murdoch: Yes. And then there's a bunch who are senior executives in the company.
WSJ: Are you going to finish the thought in terms of their effectiveness?
Mr. Murdoch: Well, they're pretty limited in what they can do because it's a subsidiary board. We don't go to them to say we want to spend $200 million in putting in a new color plant in order to satisfy the color demands of Sunday Times. We'll tell them about it.… They don't get into business judgments.
WSJ: What is their role?
Mr. Murdoch: They're there to protect editors if the editors feel they need protection. From me or from anyone of the management.
WSJ: Lord Biffen approved…
Mr. Murdoch: He wasn't on the board.
WSJ: He was the British government official who approved the deal -- he was the one who decided not to refer your purchase of the London papers to the monopolies commission -- in exchange for this resolution…
Mr. Murdoch: No. Well, yes and no. All these things had been in existence, they were put in by Thomson [the Thomson Corp., the previous owner of the Times and Sunday Times of London]. What he did was he made actually part of the law of the land. He put it through Parliament.
WSJ: We talked to him and he described it as a political "fig leaf." And said the only reason that this was done was to shield the government from criticism that it was giving you too much power by giving you the two most prestigious papers in the country, given that you already owned two other papers. They didn't consider these very promises important. He said he was ordered to do it by a civil servant. It was really a political cover and that's why they did it.
Mr. Murdoch: I can't comment on that. I don't know.
WSJ: How would the Journal board work? Would it be exactly the same?
Mr. Murdoch: That's what I'm suggesting. I'm told they'd come in with suggestions to me, so I don't know.
WSJ: Who would appoint the members?
Mr. Murdoch: I would have thought that it would be part of negotiations almost, who the first board would be, right? And then it would just roll on from there.
WSJ: What are you looking for?
Mr. Murdoch: People with absolutely no business connections to me nor the family. The family's selling out. They can't sell it and keep it. I have all the respect in the world for them, but you can't have it both ways. I can't put down $5 billion of my shareholders' money and not be able to run the business. That doesn't mean changing the editorial. We have no plans to change anything in the editorial.
WSJ: Do you mean the news side?
Mr. Murdoch: Both. I think the two-headed arrangement works fairly well. There are obviously -- sometimes when they're on different sides, but that's all right. It's part of the character of the paper.
WSJ: You wouldn't change the editor?
Mr. Murdoch: No. Or the news editor. I don't know [Managing Editor] Marcus [Brauchli], but I know he's a friend of Robert Thomson [editor of the Times of London]. And I've heard very high recommendations.
WSJ: What would you do with the paper? The New York Times quoted you as saying the stories on the front page are too long.
Mr. Murdoch: I didn't. Let me say this. I said I was frustrated by the fact that so much of the good stuff I just didn't get time to read, I found myself keeping, putting sections of the paper aside to read when I got home at night, and not getting around to it. That's my incapacity as a slow reader, perhaps.
WSJ: But you are spending $5 billion to buy the paper.
Mr. Murdoch: I think it's a big opportunity in the digital area…. We've never seen such an expansion globally around the world.
WSJ: Norman Pearlstine said you had said that if you succeeded, you would give up your job here for a year and spend the time at the Journal. It was in the Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Murdoch: I have said in the past, you know what I'd love to do is retire and be the full-time chairman of the Journal for a few years… but I've got too many responsibilities here and everywhere else.
WSJ: Tell us what you would do… Are there changes you would like to see at the Journal, improve it?
Mr. Murdoch: Not at all.
WSJ: Some people would say the front page might be boring.
Mr. Murdoch: The front page is not boring. Absolutely not.
WSJ: Then what's the opportunity for you? Digital?
Mr. Murdoch: I think it's in the digital area, digital and TV. And I think we've got to pour some money into digital. We've got to do a lot of things there… There's so much going on on the Internet. We've got to find new ways and new business models to get revenues. Or else the world is going to be owned by Google. I was asked at this investment thing I had to go to, what competitors I see I would have in five years time. Globally. I said I'm sure they'll be a lot of them. I know one is Google. It's just getting so strong, so powerful. And I know the guys, and like them. They're friends of mine. But it is a big fact of life. They sort of just hit the mother lode of search advertising and they're just destroying Microsoft search, hurting Yahoo's and making others irrelevant. I don't understand the technologies but whatever their technology is, it seems to be producing a much higher margin of profit. What are they going to do next? I saw in the New York Times today they're devising certain, a lot of computer applications which would directly challenge Microsoft, which they'll give away. So it's going to be very interesting. Four or five years ago we were all convinced Microsoft was going to take over the world. Now we're all convinced it's Google. But that's another subject.
The Internet is a great leveler. All newspapers count for less these days. So … as far as I'm concerned, I want to drive News Corp., as I've said, into being the greatest content company, whether it's in news, opinions, writing or whether it be film or television. I mean there are so many new pipes in how you deliver these things. And so on. We'll just have to use them all and see what's economical. I had a study done, and I think you've had many more studies done down there. What if they made The Wall Street Journal free instead of charging 80 bucks?
WSJ: You mean WSJ.com?
Mr. Murdoch: You'd have 10 times as many visitors and lets say five times as much advertising. But you'd lose the other, it works out at about a push…. So, the problem with a regular newspaper is how do they replace or hold their revenue models. It's not all been about the Internet. Change of lifestyle, people's time. Circulation really has been going down for 20 years before the Internet. And on top of this, in this country you have the impact of the discounters. The Targets and the Wal-Marts and what they've done to the department stores… So what's happened at papers like the LA Times. Used to see pages and pages of five different department stores. Now you get a couple of pages from one … We'll see how Mr. [Sam] Zell handles that.
WSJ: So no changing of editors then and you would leave existing management in place. Would you call them up and talk about the news of the day?
Mr. Murdoch: I'd love to wander around. I'm not going to have much time to do it. I find people quite like it if I show an interest in their work.
WSJ: How do you view the business side and the news side, and whether there's a separation or a wall between them so that when The Wall Street Journal covers News Corp., would that change?
Mr. Murdoch: There's an absolute wall. I just ask you to spell my name right Have a look at the reviews of Fox films in the Post. You can be sure that every one gets slammed ... Do they try to help our business interest or not? The answer is no.
WSJ: There seems to be other examples. The Daily Telegraph in Sydney a few weeks ago devoted most of its front page to your announcement that News Corp. would reduce its carbon emissions. The company logo was in the headline and there was an editorial that suggested you were a visionary.
Mr. Murdoch: [Laughter] I don't know anything about that. And we sure didn't do that in the Post, which I'm closest to, hardly got them to notice it. Actually, it's interesting. It caused huge excitement among our staff in Australia and in Hollywood. And a fair bit in London. New York was pretty cynical.
WSJ: Isn't this shilling for News Corp?
Mr. Murdoch: That is, absolutely. Shouldn't be. That's bad.
WSJ: The editor told us he was proud of it.
Mr. Murdoch: They're all crazy greenies over there … Don't say crazy. Extreme greenies. They're also coming out of a 10-year horrible drought.
WSJ: There was the famous 1996 New York Post headline: "Ted Turner: Is He Nuts?"
Mr. Murdoch: Page one? Well, we were in a war …. We're making up at the moment, heavily.
WSJ: Are these editors doing this to get on your good side?
Mr. Murdoch: I don't know who pulled which string, which made Gerald Levin go back on his word, on his promise that he was going to carry Fox News -- and when he walked out on us … We went to war with Time Warner. Why shouldn't Fox News be on? Why shouldn't any news be on? I even put Al Gore's news on DirecTV for which I suddenly became his world's best friend, I think. Because he bought this little thing and that was the only contract they had. He's made it and now he's got it going on Comcast. He's got it everywhere. I believe in a variety of opinions, we're not trying to push one side.
WSJ: You said you went to war with Time Warner. But is using your papers to campaign on your behalf appropriate?
Mr. Murdoch: Probably not. I think it's OK. You're talking about the daily New York Post in same breath as The Wall Street Journal. They're not the same.
WSJ: Do you agree that you were using them?
Mr. Murdoch: You seem to be reminding me of things. I didn't certainly write that headline or doing anything. I am guilty of making jokes that it was time for Ted to go back on his lithium … That's when he called me Hitler or something.
WSJ: You also went after New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman with the Post. He had that Coliseum dispute with the city. The coverage was a bit excessive and very negative. One headline called him "Suck-up Zuck." It did seem like a campaign against him.
Mr. Murdoch: It certainly wasn't me… there may have been a very worthwhile campaign, that he was taking the city for a ride. I don't know. I've completely forgotten the details. It was a genuine public issue.
WSJ: Another one was U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy in Boston, when he tried to stick in that amendment to get you to unload the Boston Herald.
Mr. Murdoch: He didn't try, he did.
WSJ: They ran headlines calling Ted Kennedy "Fat Boy." I talked to Ken Chandler who said that this was basically your cause -- that he was the general in this campaign. He said you both share the same world view. He conceded it got personal. A Herald columnist still calls him "Fat Boy" to this day.
Mr. Murdoch: Don't blame me for that what they're doing today. Look, a knock-around tabloid calls a lot of people things. We don't harbor any hatred of Teddy Kennedy or any Democrats.
WSJ: One thing to address, you obviously have a great love of newspapers, but you're also a business man…
Mr. Murdoch: Had to be. I mean, if they're not viable, the papers die.
WSJ: Do you think there is a dividing line -- or ought to be -- between the business side of a news operation and editorial side?
Mr. Murdoch: You've got to try and keep politicians at arm's length as much as you possibly can. When I go to London I'm courted by the leader of the Conservatives and I'm courted by Blair and so on… It really gives you an insight into people. But you mustn't be drawn into a feeling of closeness on a personal basis because they have too much influence on you and your judgment. And that goes for an editor, as much or more for a publisher.
WSJ: Seems to me as a proprietor, you have every right to tell them who to endorse.
Mr. Murdoch: No. I don't think so. I don't do that in London, and I wouldn't do it with the Journal.
WSJ: You did it at the Post early on.
Mr. Murdoch: That's different. I wouldn't at the Journal and I do not do it at the Times. The Times [and Sunday Times], in the election two weeks ago in Scotland came out for opposing parties. The Sunday Times had gone crazy. I didn't know they were going to do it. I wouldn't have spoken to them.
WSJ: We get the sense there's not as strong a dividing line in this area as there is in other companies. Editors feel like they are part of the corporate group. One example in Australia, some of your papers guarantee space to the Australian Football League in exchange for certain advertising rights. Generally it helps them with their relationship with the AFL, and it was mentioned when Foxtel and News as a group bid for TV football rights and won in 2001. The idea of guaranteeing anybody editorial space in exchange for some sort of business relationship is something unusual.
Mr. Murdoch: I have no knowledge of that at all. We certainly would never do that. I didn't do it. If you're saying it happened, I'll take your word for it.
WSJ: We want to talk about how you've changed your role -- in 1972 you helped design ads for the Labor Party in Australia that during the campaign ran in the Daily Telegraph.
Mr. Murdoch: I never got too close to [former Australian Prime Minster Gough] Whitlam, and they would have made a terrific difference, we really poured it on. One of my lessons in life not to get too close to politicians.
WSJ: You don't recall writing the ads?
Mr. Murdoch: I'm not denying it, I just have no memory of that. I might have written an editorial, but I don't think an ad.
WSJ: Why was that a lesson in your life?
Mr. Murdoch: Oh, I think we went a bit overboard [in supporting him].
WSJ: What about in '75 during the very contentious election.
Mr. Murdoch: I think we did a good job of covering it … The whole thing was falling apart… The government and everything was just getting terribly out of control. Gough was always going on extended trips to Crete to look at ruins.
WSJ: The 1975 campaign got a lot of attention. There was a strike.
Mr. Murdoch: …There was a lot of emotion from all sides.
WSJ: Some people have made allegations that you directed people to write certain anti-Whitlam things.…
Mr. Murdoch: No, but there was a very strong editor at the paper, Bruce Rothwell, who was anti-Whitlam. He certainly spiked a lot of people's copy… Reporters, everyone got so emotional they had reporters writing "Whitlam bestriding the nation like a giant" and so on. And he was down to about 30% in the polls and Bruce tried to bring balance into it…
WSJ: Paul Kelly told me he was replaced as political correspondent during the campaign because he had gone public opposing the company's point of view. You had rehired him in '85 to be the chief political correspondent at the Australian and that he went on to edit the paper.
Mr. Murdoch: I didn't personally replace him. I was living here. I remember he did leave and then I remember him coming back.
WSJ: The fact he had to be replaced...
Mr. Murdoch: I don't bear grudges. Not at all.
WSJ: Do you think Rothwell went too far?
Mr. Murdoch: I think he may have been too inflexible. He really was trying to bring balance. High emotion on all sides.
WSJ: The Australian wrote that the campaign set back the readership by 15 years.
Mr. Murdoch: Not true … What set back the readership was that I wrote a story that was a terrific scoop….
WSJ: The Iraqi loans affair?
Mr. Murdoch: Yeah. Absolutely true word for word… My source disappeared when it came to court. But my secondary source lied and later became prime minister, I won't name any names. [Laughter]
WSJ: How many times did you write stories yourself?
Mr. Murdoch: Very seldom. But that caused such an uproar that there was actually an organized boycott and all the schoolteachers, Labor Party members canceled the paper. We lost 10-12,000 circulation and that did take a long time to get back.
WSJ: The controversy was over the story, not that you wrote it?
Mr. Murdoch: It was daring to suggest that Gough had any blemishes.
WSJ: This is before the elections?
Mr. Murdoch: It was way after the election. Because there was a crisis, he'd been promised, he was given cash, which they'd spent, and was promised that they'd get another quarter of a million and they spent that too. Then the ad agency was going to go broke because they couldn't settle with the newspapers which they were under a legal contract to do. That caused a panic, and the guy who organized the meeting, decided to tell me about it. I hardly knew him. I didn't know how to check it out… and I found a secondary source on the story. He was visiting Israel, and he said it's exactly true. I've got to fly home now and get a loan from the bank.
WSJ: Did you put your name on the story? Was it "By Rupert Murdoch?"
Mr. Murdoch: The byline was special correspondent but everybody knew.
WSJ: But that wasn't the only time you wrote a story, or was it?
Mr. Murdoch: Yeah, [the only time] that I can remember.
WSJ: I want to ask about this Birmingham Gazette incident in England. Apparently, you wrote a letter after your internship to the paper's owner.
Mr. Murdoch: All at the age of 19, yeah.
WSJ: Denouncing the Gazette's editor, Charles Fenby, as incompetent, urging that he be fired. His son told us this. He said Fenby kept his job and laughed off the episode. Do you remember writing it?
Mr. Murdoch: Absolutely… I wrote sort of an around-town gossip column type thing… it was very respectable… and the last of my three months there or six months there … but no one ever saw Fenby or anything. I should never have wrote that letter. It was 57 years ago, give me a break. [Laughing] It was correct mind you, what I wrote. I won't take it back.
WSJ: We want to ask you about an episode about Frank Giles, the former Sunday Times editor. This has been recounted many times in books. Even before the deal was closed on buying the Times and Sunday Times, there's this episode where you go in the composing room and you see the editorial being written up and it fails to mention one of the papers that Express newspapers owned. And you pencil it in, and they take great offense. Evans wrote that he scolded you and you apologized profusely.
Mr. Murdoch: It was so ridiculous. We're in a hot metal room… I could see this factual error and I gave it to Harry and said, "Look, there's a mistake in here." This thing that I was seen putting a pencil on a proof. Come on, I was trying to improve it.
WSJ: He also says that despite one of the promises that you would not have anything to do with staffing decisions, that you ordered him to sack the magazine editor.
Mr. Murdoch: No. Frank's gone nuts. He really is losing it. I saw him over the summer. He was very nice. Never. I don't even think we had a magazine at News of the World at the time, that long ago. But certainly, I never did that. A color magazine was sort of the big winning thing that Thomson [Corp., the previous owner of the paper] did. He thought they have them in America, let's have one here. It crippled us financially a little bit … It jumped the circulation of the Sunday Times a couple of hundred thousand. I never did that. Never, never, never.
WSJ: Frank Devine says Ken Cowley, when he ran News Ltd. in Australia, tried to pressure them to not run stories that would hurt News Corp.'s other businesses and Ansett, the airline, is the example that several people bring up. Devine said he thinks he was fired because he wouldn't agree to what Cowley wanted of the coverage of the pilots' strike in '89.
Mr. Murdoch: I don't know about that. At all. I know why Frank Devine was moved, but that's another matter. Frank was a mistake of mine. I love Frank.… I got to know Frank here, Frank had been one of six editors at the Readers Digest… And to put him right into a daily paper. You've got to adjust to the pace…
WSJ: Then why did you also make him editor of the New York Post and the Australian?
Mr. Murdoch: I don't know. I really forget that time. Whether Frank asked to go back to Australia or I thought it was a good move that he was a more cerebral sort of person … I've honestly forgotten.
WSJ: Do you think maybe there was too much of a culture where some of these executives thought they could pressure editors about things that related to other parts of the company?
Mr. Murdoch: No, certainly it wasn't set by me. No and I'm not sure that's true about Cowley. I'm not sure at all. I wouldn't defend the practice.
WSJ: Andrew Neil of the Sunday Times told us when he was the editor, they had a story about British officials preparing to bribe to win a construction contract in Malaysia and this offended the Malaysian prime minister. At the time he said you were trying to sell satellite dishes for Star TV in Malaysia. He says you called him up and told him the coverage was boring.
Mr. Murdoch: I never tried to sell any satellite dishes in Malaysia. I remember the story which they tried to run and run and run. I said, "Are you sure of your facts? Have you gotten a smoking gun here?" I might have asked him that. But I never tried to stop it or anything else. I was surprised at Andrew…. He certainly came out against Thatcher and tried to kill her without a word to me.
WSJ: Do you think that was that a mistake on his part? Should he have asked you first?
Mr. Murdoch: No.
WSJ: Why were you questioning those stories? Why would you care about those stories?
Mr. Murdoch: I want everything to be accurate. I want to produce good newspapers.
WSJ: So there was no business interest for Star in Malaysia?
Mr. Murdoch: No.
WSJ: He says he left his job over this.
Mr. Murdoch: Bull----. Who? Andrew? Bull----. Andrew left years after that … And then he wanted to come to America and do TV here… We made pilots of shows … and showed it to focus … I said to Andrew, "Listen, I'll support you as to the quality of your stories … but you can't be the star and the director. You can be behind the camera or you can be in front of the camera, but you can't have both. And he said, "If that's the case I'll have to go back to England or my public will forget me."
WSJ: Your criticism was over accuracy? Did the Malaysian prime minister complain to you?
Mr. Murdoch: No.
WSJ: We want to ask you about the South China Morning Post. We talked to Seth Faison. When the paper first started the Beijing bureau, he and another reporter say you never interfered, but they say Clarence Chang, who was on the business side of the paper -- in 1988 he was the managing director -- did. They say he was going to Beijing for a business meeting and while there he met with the reporters and complained to them about a column they wrote that was critical of a spring festival covered on Chinese television. And Faison says Chang told them they should write more upbeat stories about China. He said to them, it's "good for me, for you and it's good for Rupert." The reporters said they ignored the appeal.
Mr. Murdoch: Good.
WSJ: You don't approve of telling reporters to write positive stories?
Mr. Murdoch: No.
WSJ: Why did you sell the paper?
Mr. Murdoch: Because I saw what was coming… There would be pressure from Beijing every day. And I think it's just about driven the poor guy who bought it mad although he's got big interests in China… they've now got someone from Xinhua sitting outside their office…. It was a very profitable paper.
WSJ: Was that a problem in terms of expanding in China?
Mr. Murdoch: That was never part of the plan … The decision to sell it was to get out ahead before any pressures came from anywhere. We never had any policy pressures on us there at all.
WSJ: So you saw it coming. But was your ultimate concern down the road that to do battle with Beijing might be bad for your expansion plans in China and you wanted to avoid that?
Mr. Murdoch: No. We don't really have any expansion plans. We have a little channel in China … in Shanghai which is officially allowed onto two or three cable systems. I think we've managed to get the losses down..
WSJ: Things haven't gone great for anybody?
Mr. Murdoch: For anybody. Ask Google.
WSJ: Tell us about why you dropped the BBC in China on Star TV.
Mr. Murdoch: Totally separate issue, two different things. The BBC was very simple. We bought in a battle with Pearson, actually, because we were partners in Sky and not getting on at all. They turned up trying to buy Star and I went in fairly blindly … and it was losing $100 million a year, and they were putting out these channels over Asia all in English … So was MTV, and so was Prime Sports. And so on. I mean how are you going to get an audience in English? It's ridiculous. I said how are we going to pay BBC ten million dollars if they get billions of dollars in taxpayers' money? They're trying to kill us in England. Let them pay their own way. The service goes on uninterrupted as far as I know. But at their cost …
WSJ: We spoke with Gary Davey who was then head of Star TV in Hong Kong. He said one issue was that the BBC station identifier showed the Tiananmen Square episode and it was a constant reminder. He said you were emphatic about dropping the BBC.
Mr. Murdoch: Primarily a financial consideration. But it might have occurred to me, this might have not hurt relations with Beijing. At that stage, I had not been received by a single minister or anyone. They had a report from Xinhua that when I had the South China Morning Post that I was a member of MI6 or MI5 [British intelligence agencies]. So no one was allowed to see me. We just had a total blackout for five years.
WSJ: And the book by Chris Patten, the former Hong Kong governor?
Mr. Murdoch: Look, we reject books all the time, publish too many, not politically, don't get me wrong. Everyone's publishing too many books to get any space in Barnes & Noble or anywhere. The Chris Patten book, when I was asked about it, I said … "I just think that he was a terrible governor down there… And he was going back on everything that Thatcher had said … he was trying to change the status quo ... But the editor fell in love with it and the manager never had the guts …. It was just finding another publisher. We weren't suppressing it, in any sense. On the other hand, in retrospect, it would have made a whole lot less fuss if we just let it go on. A mistake.
WSJ: Your personal representative in Beijing said you thought the book would set you back and to "kill the f------ book." Did you think it would set you back?
Mr. Murdoch: No. No one in China ever spoke to me about it. I was never put under any pressure.
WSJ: We'd like to come back to an important point. What's the difference between the Post and the Journal?
Mr. Murdoch: I feel more restraint at the [London] Times than I would at the [New York] Post and so on. Let me give you another parallel: London. I walk around the Sun office a lot more than I walk around the Times office. And talk to the editor a lot more, I don't say do this and do that. But she'll come into me and say Gordon Brown called me today about such and such and what do you think? And I'm probably therefore a little bit more involved.
WSJ: Why is that?
Mr. Murdoch: Because they don't have any restraints on me. That's all I'm saying. That would make this more of a parallel, you know. And I'm quite unashamed, I enjoy popular journalism. I must say I enjoy it more than what you would call quality journalism. I used to bait my friends in London by calling it the unpopular papers. That's before we got the Times.
WSJ: You personally like The Journal, don't you?
Mr. Murdoch: It's absolutely my first paper, the Post is my second…. What worries me is people not reading newspapers, they have like My Yahoo… I couldn't live with that -- at least scanning three or four newspapers in a day. And my head's full of useless info, but some of it turns out useful occasionally.
WSJ: The Guardian's Sunday newspaper, the Observer, in London reported that you would appoint Robert Thomson as publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Is that true?
Mr. Murdoch: No. I haven't thought about it. New idea to me. All I've heard about [Wall Street Journal Publisher] Gordon Crovitz is that he's this brilliant man.
WSJ: So does that mean you wouldn't appoint Thomson as publisher?
Mr. Murdoch: I've never thought about it. And I would imagine that Gordon Crovitz would stay there, I don't know. I understand that they've all been given golden parachutes or something. Or change-of-control bonuses of several millions. But I don't know what it adds up to.
WSJ: DJ stock is trading at around $61. That's above your $60 offer. Are you prepared to offer more?
Mr. Murdoch: No, no. Everyone thinks that $60 is a terrific offer. Most people think I'm stone crazy….
WSJ: So you're not willing to raise it, under any circumstances?
Mr. Murdoch: No. Right. Look let's go into a negotiation and let's see. I'm not willing to negotiate it. I'm not willing to discuss it any further. I don't have any secret plans to pay more.
WSJ: But you could easily afford to pay more, no?
Mr. Murdoch: I'm not holding a charity, I could afford to give more money to charity. But are the Bancrofts the best charity in the world, I don't know.
WSJ: We heard that you've been having ongoing contact with different members of the family since some time last year.
Mr. Murdoch: I haven't personally.
WSJ: Through representatives?
Mr. Murdoch: Various people, yeah.
WSJ: You told people last year you couldn't do a deal right then because of Liberty Media Corp. But you were trying to gauge the interest.
Mr. Murdoch: If I'd said that at the time that would have been true. I just don't remember…. I've never spoken directly but someone might have been. You won't get a denial from me.
WSJ: On behalf of our colleagues, you say that retaining the team of journalists, editors, management would be a key priority for News Corp. What would you do to retain the team?
Mr. Murdoch: Huge raises for everybody. [Laughter] I'd have to see when I get in there. But I would have thought that the editors who are there in the different areas from what I've heard have the support of their staffs and I will try and build that up. You've got to have really strong leadership and excitement and things going. That's also got to go on the business side because they've got to get some more advertising. I mean the profit of The Journal is very small if you look at the reports. Those silly little Ottaway papers make more than the Journal does.
WSJ: So you would focus on generating more ad revenue?
Mr. Murdoch: Yeah, or and electronic everything, circulation, anything. The Journal has had no money spent on marketing that I'm aware of for years. I imagine whatever we do would take the profit down in the short term… I mean of the Journal… It's got to have money put back into it, particularly on the digital side.
WSJ: If you want to raise circulation immediately some people would assume you would try to liven up the Journal.
Mr. Murdoch: No, no, no. I want to do some due diligence. I don't even know exactly how many printing plants you have. Or how many you own… or anything.
WSJ: An important issue: If The Journal were to do stories about your other interests -- and they were stories that you didn't like -- how would you deal with that? Would you expect to be informed about what we're writing?
Mr. Murdoch: No. I'd complain like hell if they were incorrect. I would imagine I'd know because you would have been questioning me like you are now. But you'd have to run what you like. The only thing I complained about is when they attacked my wife. And as Paul (E. Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal ) said in a public statement, nothing unusual about it [my call to the paper], and nothing inappropriate, was said.
WSJ: Would you take any action against the people who wrote that story?
Mr. Murdoch: No. They're gone.
WSJ: But some aren't.
Mr. Murdoch: Well, then don't tell me what their names are. I know what motivated the story … I'm sensitive.
WSJ: Some people have said that if you buy The Journal, there would be a perception if we did a story about Viacom or Time Warner that you would be behind it. Even if we would have run a story anyway.
Mr. Murdoch: I tell you if you do a story about Viacom, I'll have … [chairman Sumner Redstone] on the phone for two days running. But I won't even tell you about it… What if you do a story on Fortune Magazine or Time Inc. or whether you do a story about the New York Times, you do it all the time, people can say the same things about you, right now.
WSJ: No one would dispute that in the history of journalism, you're a major, major figure. But there's quite a few people who feel you're not a positive figure. Does that bother you?
Mr. Murdoch: No… I've been around a long time. I've got a thick skin.
WSJ: When Fox News launched there was a double-page spread in the Post talking about this great new channel. Would that have been something that you asked them to do? Or would that have been something they would have done on their own?
Mr. Murdoch: I think they would have done it on their own. We're all in it together. We're a pretty close company. They didn't do it to say, "Let's suck up to Murdoch or this or whatever." They'd like to see it succeed probably. I don't remember.
WSJ: You wouldn't use The Journal in any such way to promote the launch?
Mr. Murdoch: No. Now I would imagine that the launching of a major news channel would get noted.
WSJ: Do you think you'll face any competition for Dow Jones?
Mr. Murdoch: Not from anybody that I've seen mentioned yet. I mean, if someone like Google comes in and starts throwing around their funny money, who knows But I don't think. Look, the country's been combed…
WSJ: So are you confident at this point that it's yours?
Mr. Murdoch: No. I'll see what demands they make at this first meeting. If they're reasonable, then they should be OK. And Then we'll see what they go into… There has been so much publicity, I don't think it's necessary to put an investment bank on this for two months looking for other bids, and I think that would create an uncertainty about the whole company which would be bad for the company. But you know, they'll do what they will do.
WSJ: The Tribune company was shopped around for quite a while.
Mr. Murdoch: Yeah, but there weren't any buyers.
WSJ: There was one in the end.
Mr. Murdoch: For $90 million. Risk. That's in the figures …
WSJ: Why didn't you do it?
Mr. Murdoch: Don't want to spend the rest of my life going through that, getting rid of people, ugly. I think they're in decline, they can fire a few hundred people everywhere, save a couple of hundred million dollars ... I guess they will have a billion a year to pay down the debt, that's what it sounds like. No, a bit less … I would have thought that, although the decline in readership … will probably go on…
WSJ: They're all going to MySpace.
Mr. Murdoch: I wish they were. They're all going to Facebook at the moment.
Here's an example of how some people just don't get the Internet -- Sam Zell . According to CNBC and The Washington Post, Sam comes to Stanford University and makes this comment:
"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" Zell said during the question period after his speech. "Not very."
This proves he doens't understand what the heck's going on. Google DRIVES traffic to the newspapers -- all Google has to do is drop Sam's newspapers, advance other news sources -- which are plentiful -- and leave him in the dust!
Google has links to the newspapers -- Sam Zell can buy more links to them. But Google's not the only search engine -- there are hundreds of them! There's Yahoo! Mamma. Lycos. This list goes on. In fact, here it is, and this one doesn't include blog search engines!
Complete SE list 7Search -Pay for position SE. Acclaim Search -by ValueCom. AOL -Lousy web search. AllCrawl -"Why Choose, When You Can Have It All?" All The Web -Claims alot of pages, but disappointing. AltaVista -Also offers translation. Amnesi -Search internet server names (DNS names). Ampleo -Human interactive search engine. Free. Ask Jeeves -Uses natual language input. Mediocre. Deja.Com -Search UseNet newsgroups. Deoji -Includes tools for WebTV. Dewa - DevSearch -The web developer's SE. DirectHit -One of the biggies. Pretty good. DMOZ -Open directory project Excite -Rated as one of the best SEs. Findit2000 - FindWhat -Pay for position. Frequent Finders -Search for words in the actual URLs. Funkycat -International search engine with a broad index. GenieKnows - Google -Huge *and* accurate, a favorite. Weighs popularity. Go -Mis-managed by Mickey Mouse & Co. Go2Net - GoshDarn! -Hot new search engine HotBot -Scalable. Search a domain, eg. [.edu]. iBound - Info Hiway - Infomak - InfoSeek -Owned by Disney. Average. Intelliseek -Their Profusion site allows searching 1000 sites, including many on the 'invisible web' IXQuick -Highly rated. Jump City - Kanoodle -Pay for position SE. Link Centre - Link Master - Links2Go -Most-referenced pages by topics; it's also personalizable. Look Up - Lost Link/ Web Links -Great site, adds links instantly... with banners! Lycos -"Wolf spider" (Latin). Another SE biggie. MSN - NBCi -New respect for this search engine TheNet1 - Nexor Aliweb - NorthernLight -Recommended, plus a special pay collection. Overture -Top pay for position SE, high commercial relevance. Pathfinder/ Time-Warner -Time, People, Money, Fortune, etc... Reference.Com -UseNet resources Rocket Links -Pay for position SE. Scrub The Web -Robot SE claims to have indexed 80 MM pages. Search.Com -CNET. Infoseek SE, own db for subjects. Search4Info - Search Hound -Pay for position. Slow? Search King -Indexes instantly. Surfers votes determine ranking. Snap -Advanced setting allows excluding words, eg. xxx, porn, etc.. Splat Search - Subjex - Super Cyber Search -Pay for position. ToggleBot -10MM URLs. MetaSearch, Directory, Auction Search, etc.. TopClick -The Private SE. Claims to protect privacy. No cookies. WebCrawler -Very user friendly interface. Owned by Excite. Web Direct - WebSearch2K -New SE, pay for position, no adult. WebVentureHotlist - What-U-Seek- Where2Go -TOP 20 search engine, directory of URLs. WWWHunter - Yahoo! -Leading net directory. Zen Search - Z Search -"The last name in searching"
