And then there was Murdoch (part one)

[DUreader]

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1115971,00.html


Rupert Murdoch enters 2004 as, arguably, the world's only real
media mogul having just concluded a takeover of America's
largest satellite pay-TV channel. While others have fallen by the
wayside, the man who owns 30% of British national newspapers
and controls Sky continues to flourish. But how long can this
72-year-old keep it up? The acclaimed US media commentator
Michael Wolff has spent years watching - and often mocking - the
tycoon's every move, and those of his rivals. Here, in exclusive
extracts from his new book, Autumn of the Moguls, Wolff analyses
what drives Murdoch and describes how they met for an
impromptu dinner - and what happened when they finally had a
proper meeting

Monday January 5, 2004
The Guardian

The fact that Rupert Murdoch's people are paying me good money to write
about the end of Murdoch and his ilk may actually reflect one of my basic
points about mogul kingdoms - AOL Time Warner, Vivendi, Viacom,
Disney and News Corp. They're always being subverted. Any megamedia
conglomerate is really, as anyone who has worked in one knows, a
confederation of more or less non-cooperative parts. It's quite possible
that only in periods of acquisition, sale or big share-price losses do the
people who work for a mogul acually personalise their part in his grand
scheme and do their literal follow-the-mogul duty. Otherwise mogul
employees are mostly able to passive-aggressively defy, if not ignore,
their mogul master.

And yet equally, I've wondered in my paranoid moments if I might not be a
pawn of Murdoch's doing what he wants me to do, which is to make the case
that he's a lot less powerful than he obviously is.

Moguls want power, but they want it with a certain order of ritual
deniability. Indeed, Murdoch, claiming that his influence is greatly
exaggerated ("We're minnows," he's said), is constantly engaged in an
effort to waive whatever media ownership rules have not yet been waived.

[DUreader]

1. Part 2:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1115973,00.html


Here, in an exclusive extract from his new book, Autumn of the
Moguls, Michael Wolff describes what happened when he finally
had a proper meeting had a proper meeting with Rupert Murdoch.

Monday January 5, 2004
The Guardian

In the New York lair with father and son
We had our rehearsal lunch just before Rupert left for London (where I
was to interview him, via satellite, for a media conference in New York,
two days later).

As office towers go, the News Corp building on Sixth Avenue and 47th
Street in Manhattan is something of a downmarket affair. Fox News
broadcasts from here (the Fox studios have a fabled tawdriness - with a
green room where no reasonable person would eat the Danish for fear of
food poisoning) and the corporate offices are upstairs - it has a living-
above-the-store feeling. Likewise, the New York Post, removed from its
storied headquarters on South Street, operates out of a corner of a floor
here, a great metropolitan newspaper reduced to a back office.

You clearly get the point at the News Corp building that one of the virtues
of tabloid journalism is that it's cheap - there isn't any pretence.

Upstairs too the News Corp headquarters was inauspicious. The real estate
world was clearly an afterthought for News Corp. Murdoch wasn't
building any literal monuments to himself.

[punpirate]

2. Wolff just fell about forty stories, in my opinion.

So much of this is emptily laudatory: "I confess: I had something like a crush on Rupert."

Whatever few points Wolff tries to make in his own favor, they are all self-congratulatory and effectively meaningless.

Wolff's first mistake was taking money for this from one of Murdoch's firms. Second was believing he was smarter and more honest than Murdoch--he is neither.

[Just Me]

3. Yikes!!! BUMP

[Just Me]

4. Why something like this fails to get more attention,..

confuses "Just Me".

The complaints of media moguls,...and this quietly passes through.

Why?