Rupert Murdoch, the legendary founder of News Corp., has always had a love-hate relationship with the digital world. Sometimes (read: during the bubbles) he loves it. Sometimes (read: during advertising recessions) he hates it. His recent moves – whether it be getting rid of some of News Corp’s digital holdings or shuffling the chairs at MySpace — are a continuation of that …  Read More →

Rupert Murdoch knows who’s winning the war between big media and the Internet. Unsurprisingly, it’s Rupert Murdoch. “Without content, the ever-larger and flatter screens, the tablets, the e-readers and the increasingly sophisticated mobile phones would be lifeless,” he proclaimed when News Corp. posted unexpectedly strong fiscal 2010 second-quarter earnings . “Devices and platforms are proliferating but this clever technology... 

The art of verbal self-defense can be tricky. Ramble on while defending yourself against critics, and you can expose yourself to new criticisms. For a recent and clear case study in this misstep, look no further than Google’s own Eric Schmidt. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “How Google Can Help Newspapers,” Schmidt set out to argue what has been said a million times before , and what everyone but news executives in denial... 

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, day one of its two-day workshop, How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? , gave a highly visible platform to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and about a dozen other “old media” bigwigs from which to bash what Murdoch called “the wholesale misappropriation” and “theft” of newspaper content by aggregators and search engines. Today, Google announced a new program...