Soundbite: Murdoch Deputy Says “Beware Of Geeks Bearing Gifts”

by Robert Quigley | 10:26 am, December 1st, 2009

» 1 comment

“The news, they say, is viral now – that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts. Here we are in 2009 – more viral, less profitable. Because news costs. Because quality costs. Because free sets the price too low. Because free isn’t sustainable. Because free is too expensive.”

–Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton, railing against the “content kleptomaniacs” who dominate the Web

In a blistering speech at the World Newspaper Conference, Hinton echoed his boss Rupert Murdoch‘s suspicions about the Internet. Along with the pugnacious quote above (though who actually says “the news is viral?”), he compared old media entering the web to “an over-eager middle-aged dad,” criticized aggregators and “thieves” for the newspaper industry’s nosedive, and called out Jeff Jarvis as a moony-eyed leader of “the information-must-be-free imperative.”

To which Jarvis replied on his blog: a. I’m not actually a member of that crowd, and b. hey, remember when Rupert Murdoch favorably referenced me in a speech in 2005?

Read the full speech at paidcontent.org.

(via paidcontent; h/t Romenesko)

Dow Jones, Jeff Jarvis, Les Hinton, rupert murdoch, Soundbite, World Newspaper Conference

m

If you want to earn money on the internet, you can only do it by providing a service nobody else can. The internet is the global flatlands where everyone stand on equal grounds. Seems to me that Murdoch, for being such an incredible neoliberal which reflects through out all of his newspapers, simply hates having too much competition. Ironic, isn’t it?

I tend to pirate much of the music I consume, but when I can’t obtain it through file sharing networks, or if I want a high-quality version, or if I want a song that I can’t find anywhere else, I buy the songs from iTunes. This is how the internet works: you get money and visitors if you give access and content and availability to things you can’t find anywhere else on the internet. Especially if it’s free. As long as Murdoch owns dozens and dozens of papers that do the exact same thing, they’ll just be perpetual money sinkholes.

Mediaite stands out as the best website that gathers news about American media, which is why I visit. I believe the model of news aggregation, together with some own reporting and opinion is a recipe that works really well (“Huffpo model”). But something says to me that NewsCorp don’t think outside the box. They’re still too fixated of the traditional physical way of doing things.