News Limited has announced a very interesting reorganisation in Australia. The Australian, the national daily, will move out from under Nationwide News which contains the state based dailies. It will, says the report, “position The Australian for further growth in print and online, as well as through emerging digital platforms such as smartphones and electronic readers, at a time when the media group is looking to charge for online content.”
Reorganistations can happen for all sorts of reasons: a slow week in the HR department, personality conflicts, a need to give a promising manager a chance to run something. With a well managed company like News though, we should give the benefit of the doubt and accept that there is a good business reason, though not necessarily the one announced.
Murdoch has been trying to thrash out an online strategy for quite a while. He (and on important issues we can assume that it is his decision) has made mistakes. MySpace looks like an expensive mistake. He has publicly canvassed whether he can or should charge for content online and seems to have changed his mind a couple of times on this. His current position is that he will.
Many tech scribblers dismiss Murdoch and his organisation: “he just doesn’t get the internet” is a common theme. This I think is a misunderstanding of how, in the real world, companies develop strategies when technology changes the game. No-one can predict the future so trial and error is the only way to get there. Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple all did that.
I would not bet against Murdoch. If any old-media organisation will survive, my guess is that it will be his.
Coming back to the reorganisation, I suspect that The Australian has been chosen as the publication to survive in Australia. Classified advertising is dying and that is hurting the state papers – though not Murdoch as much as Fairfax – and the future is probably in national content and national advertising. It is a big bet, and ironic after those stories that The Australian was continued for many years to give Murdoch as bit of class in his home country.
It seems to me that The Australian has improved a lot in recent years. You might want to bleep over the leaders and some of the columns if they offend you and you are left with meatier and better news stories than you get elsewhere.
It will all be most interesting to watch.
