He loves to peddle the tawdry and twist reality. His London papers, The Sun and the recently-deceased criminal enterprise The News of the World, do and did regularly soil the streets of that city. Here, The New York Post carries the same tawdry gene.
As is the case with the always-failing Moonie-owned Washington Times, the paper hasn’t earned a single dime in profit since Murdoch bought it in 1993. For a few years, he even dropped the price to 25 cents to prop up circulation (about 600,000). For comparison’s sake, The New York Times sells – in the City alone – about a million and a half papers every day and still makes a tidy profit.
That price by the way? The 25 cents? That was the cheapest single issue price in the country. (Have you noticed that keyboards no longer have a key for the cent sign.)
To support this rich man’s toy and to keep it on the streets so as to maintain a powerful voice advancing his own interests, both political and financial, costs Murdoch $70 million a year, almost a billion and a half dollars since ’93.
Calling Lou Dobbs . . . your show on the FOX Business Channel might want to report on such an epic business fail.
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 
Holding the ALT key and typing the nubers 0-1-6-2 will give you the cent sign.
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Hardly need it . . . can’t remember the last time I time I used it. I didn’t even know there wasn’t one on my keyboard till I wrote this post. So that’s how outdated was Mr Murdoch’s price – as outdated as the cent sign.
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Oh noes, scary loud woman not afraid to state her opinion! Her husband must hate that! But seriously, it (almost) warms my heart to know that Rupie actually has something in his life he cares about more than profit. Even if it’s just hatemongering.
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Hey brat, if it warms your heart, I’ve done my job today!
As for Hillary, way too uppity, deserves what she gets. (And she made those guys look like they were the teenager boys who never could get a date with the popular girls.)
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Heh heh. So true.
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I’ll admit that I’ve noticed that tabs seems to skew very right, especially under Obama. They seem to love stories about Obama’s fake birth certificate, supposed turmoil in his family (especially involving Michelle), and even stories about one kind of plot or another to undermine the country. I always thought of them as largely a-political, and kind of wacky fun before, not so much now. Am I the only one who thinks this.
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I always liked that quote attributed to William Randolph Hearst: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”
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Once again, wrong. 😆 This one’s a common set of mistake though.
Firstly, old Rupert doesn’t get involved with the content of ANY of his businesses, especially the print ones. He learned that lesson a generation ago, though it took him destroying two newspapers to learn that lesson.
Secondly, as much as Murdoch loves money – and does he EVER love it! – he’s addicted to newspapers, even though they’re a failing medium.
Thirdly, Murdoch has, from my experience, no real political agenda at all. If he could make more money spewing Leftist crap, he would do so in heartbeat. As the MSM stands now, though, Newscorp is the only non-Leftist company and Rupert’s raking in tons and tons of money by being the ONLY counterpart to the rest of the MSM.
As a final note – YES! The Post is vulgar. That’s what it’s there for. It’s no more news than the Inquirer is.
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[Murdoch has, from my experience, no real political agenda at all]
You’re Murdoch??? 😯
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No but I worked for him for 5 years and we interacted fairly often both at work and after it when he was at HQ. Not as much, however, as he interacted w/ the CFOs of his businesses. They were / are required to give him daily P & L forecast updates.
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Hmm, you’re a man of many talents, jonolan…
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Yes, but not so many as you might think. Many things are more related than seem at the surface.
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Guess what – I worked for him too – twice. Although quite briefly both times. First time, he bought the publishing group I was with, merged it with another, and fired about 2/3 of the staff. So I moved on and went to another publisher – guess who bought us two years later? Why it was the Murdoch group that swallowed my former employer. At a somewhat lower level than your exalted one jonolan (really! man of MANY talents, I’d die to see that resume), I was dealing with 2nd tier executives. None of them were evven polite, but then one would expect that kind of emotional armor from folks whose job is destruction.
As for agendas, one cannot separate political intersts and economic interests in Rupert’s realm – they are the same. He’s screwing around with the news side of the WSJ for one reason . . .
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The one and only reason that he’s “screwing around with the WSJ” is he’s making a vain attempt to keep it alive. It was a dying paper because it’s main purpose had been supplanted by both advances in technology and a change in the demographic of investors.
I don’t like the way he changed it, but I have no evidence to support any theory beyond trying to keep a poorly thought out and emotion purchase from failing.
But then, we have to separate Murdoch from those who work for him. Murdoch saw that Conservative news would be lucrative, so he hired people to run companies that provide it. They often have agendas…
Hell! Ailes is a paranoid-delusional, one-man freak show! He’s good at business though, he must be since he runs Fox News from an armored bunker w/ better security than most heads of state. 8-0
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jonolan, when I said ‘screwing around’ with the WSJ, I’m not referring to the business model or circulation strategies or even the redesign. That’s all perfectly normal when you acquire a new property.
I am referring to a number of instances since he acquired Dow Jones where there have been investigtons into whether the WSJ intentionally wrote stories that werre intentioanlly msleading. As a news organization, they had been just a national treasure so this was a big change.
A dying paper? Really? It was – and is – one of the most successful of the dailies left. According to Pro-Publica (two years ago):
The Wall Street Journal is the top-selling daily newspaper in the United States and a brand with global prominence. Founded in 1889, it long dominated American business publishing, becoming the country’s first national newspaper. It routinely ranked in surveys as America’s most trusted print publication.
The Bancroft family owned Dow Jones since 1902 and controlled it as a publicly traded company since 1963. Murdoch’s bid was economically attractive. He offered $60 a share, a 67 percent premium, $2.25 billion over the market price the day his offer was announced, at a time when newspaper share prices had been flagging for more than two years. Within 14 months after the deal closed, in early 2009, News Corp. had to write down the value of its $5.6 billion purchase by $2.8 billion.
The paper was not dying.
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Trust me, Moe. I got stuck with being involved with the takeover and I saw – and heard from their people – that the WSJ was dying, albeit far slower than most of the other dailies.
BTW – That doesn’t contradict anything that ProPublica wrote. Also, the write down was normal, given the inflated price Murdoch paid for his favorite little jewel. (The man has a foolish obsession with newspapers).
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And they’re trying to get Piers Morgan deported? Can’t we stick a sock in Rupert’s mouth and send him on his way? Please?
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In fairness Elyse, I’m fine with sending Piers on his way – but for me, it’s because he’s really annoying.
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Why must Murdoch be shut up ? No one else holds Democrats accountable . The traditional role of the press is to be a pain in the a$$ to whoever holds political power . Imagine if someone in the press had said that he should pinch himself wolf, or felt a thrill up his leg when W was near .
The Press is not supposed to have a love affair with whoever is President .
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Alan, you’ll find that accountability is a one-way street in Liberal minds. They won’t their media to the same standards that they apply to Americans’. The same can be said of their views on the POTUS.
Not that we’re 100% better, mind you. Both sides maintain loyalty to our respective countries and causes as being of paramount importance and let slide failings of our countrymen.
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@Alan and jonolan – as you lament the ‘liberal media’, please do notice that in print – papers and mags – those you define as liberal (like Time – really?)are the ones that lots and lots of people pay money for, the ones that make money. Those defined as conservative (WSJ excepted) don’t sell so well. The people vote iwth their pocketbooks.
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Actually, Moe, none of them are really profitable anymore, though magazines are holding up better than dailies. Print is moribund.
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Shoot – I just lost a whole comment. Damn. Anyway, I agree that daily papers and news mags are dying. Their day is passing. (although niche publications seem to be holding their own). But if you look at circulation and profit numbers for the last 10, 20, 30, 50 years, you will see that the ‘liberal’ media has always outperformed the consevative by huge margins.
I documented some of it here a while back: https://maureenholland.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/netroots-nation-the-liberal-media-and-whos-making-the-money-buddy/
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