Australia

Kiwi stunt promotes breaking news on the web

Click to watch video

From the breaking news battleground in New Zealand…

One of the country’s leading news websites, stuff.co.nz, drew a crowd in downtown Auckland last Thursday, causing pedestrians to look up, grab their mobile phone cameras and start clicking.

The publicity stunt (click the video above to watch) touts the site’s commitment to being first with breaking news, while looking very much like a breaking news story itself. And of course, it’s all captured on video, which stuff.co.nz is no doubt hoping becomes a viral hit. (That would be much more likely if the stuff people offered a video embed code.)

It reminds me of the days when radio stations battled for breaking news honours. Remember 20-20 News, 60-second updates and news hotlines with weekly payouts for the best tips? This stunt brings that sort of competitive tub-thumping to online news. All good fun, but will it change reader behaviour?

Stuff.co.nz is owned by Fairfax, which publishes several New Zealand newspapers and owns the trademe.co.nz auction website.

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Murdoch ponders ad-supported free Journal online

wsj.com front page - June 8, 2007
— WSJ.com, subscription-free under Murdoch?

The Wall Street Journal website has posted a partial transcript of a 90-minute interview with Rupert Murdoch, the man aiming to take over the Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones.

That takeover now appears to be just a matter of time, as acknowledged in the introduction to the transcript:

Since his surprise $5 billion bid became public last month, it has touched off an intense debate over whether he will preserve the independence of the paper’s news operations.

The use of “will” rather than “would” suggests that Murdoch’s News Corp will succeed in buying Dow Jones, at least in the opinion of a Journal editor.

In the interview, Murdoch indicated he would consider removing subscriptions fees from wsj.com, a news site renowned as one of the few that makes substantial revenue by charging for access. Here’s the relevant section of the interview: 

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 …

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An insider’s look at the decline of Dow Jones

How did the once-mighty Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, end up in Rupert Murdoch’s takeover plans?

Here’s part of the story, from former Journal reporter Dean Starkman:

…soon after I arrived in 1996, [Publisher Peter] Kann’s board announced a $650 million plan to fix Telerate, internally called “Rolling Thunder,” which inevitably became known as “Rolling Blunder,” and which executives quoted in Fortune described variously as “schizophrenic,” “total confusion,” and worse. Customers complained that using “Dow Jones Markets” products was like buying a car you had to assemble yourself.

Starkman, who worked at the Journal from 1996 to 2004, chronicles the Dow Jones “tragedy” at CJR Daily.

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Examining the Murdoch record

Rupert Murdoch’s record as proprietor of newspapers in Britain and the US may undermine his assurances of editorial continuity for his latest takeover target, the Wall Street Journal.

David Carr, writing at nytimes.com, assesses the media mogul’s actions, as well as his words, and looks to his possible intentions for the Journal:

There is business synergy in the deal — between the News Corporation’s proposed Fox Business cable TV channel and the Journal, for example. But far more important is Mr. Murdoch’s own version of synergy, which puts business, media and government all in a single vertical. Owning the Journal would give him a powerful leverage in all three.

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CanWest may increase Australasian stake

After several months of expert predictions that CanWest was preparing to give up its investments in Australasian media, a report from CanWest’s home country today suggests just the opposite.

The Globe & Mail says CanWest, with its new and “deep-pocketed” equity partner Goldman Sachs, is keen to increase its stake in Australia’s Channel 10 network.

CanWest also owns New Zealand’s TV3 and C4 television channels and RadioWorks broadcast group.

Until Goldman Sachs appeared on the scene, experts had predicted CanWest would need to sell assets in the South Pacific to fund its takeover of specialty TV network Alliance Atlantis. But the New York-based investment bank will pay most of the C$2.3 billion acquisition cost.

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Back to blogging

Belated Happy New Year greetings. Hope you had a good holiday.

It’s great to be back home after six weeks travelling across Australia. Our goal was to drive from Perth to Brisbane while avoiding any city over 50,000 population – and it proved a good plan.

Highlights were the southern West Australia wine country and forests, crossing the Nullarbor with its 1500km of subtly-changing scenery and glimpses of the Great Australian Bight, four days piloting a houseboat on the River Murray, and a couple of weeks relaxing in the gorgeous Barossa Valley, Fleurieu Peninsula, Kangaroo Island and Blue Mountains.

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