HitlerHitlerHitlerHitlerHitlerHitler

By Darryl Mason

Apparently if Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers don't run at least one story a week mentioning "Hitler" and/or "Nazis" the entire media organisation will wither and die.

What other explanation can there be for such a relentless obsession?

The latest :



First, the smear. Then the beat-up :



Wilkie dealt with the allegations at a press conference earlier today :

"Let me start by saying I can't remember anything about that specific allegation, but I have never made any secret of the fact that I was one of the many cadets involved in the bastardisation scandal at the Royal Military college Duntroon in 1983.

"In fact I was disciplined for misconduct at the time.

"I am obviously regretful of my behaviour of almost 30 years ago when I was a cadet at Duntroon in my early 20s.

"I think that sort of behaviour at the time was wrong and I regret I was in any way involved in that sort of behaviour.

"I've obviously grown up a lot in the last 30 years and what at the time seemed appropriate, I have learned is clearly inappropriate and nor is it necessary in a place like Duntroon or in the Defence Force Academy.

"If there is anyone in this country who feels aggrieved in any way by anything I've ever said or done to them then I apologise unreservedly."

Wilkie is, rightly, suspicious of why this near 30 year old incident, if it happened at all, is suddenly headline news, in the midst of his campaign for badly needed reforms of the multi-billion dollar Australian poker machines industry :

"There is clearly a campaign that is being waged against me on account of the fact I am the only thing standing between the poker machine industry and the $5 billion that is lost by problem gamblers in this country on poker machines each year.

"I will not be intimidated by that campaign against me, I will not be cowed in any way."

Nor should he. The Hitler card has been played. What's next?

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown

By Darryl Mason


Screengrab from The Australian online front page in the days following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami

How many times can pro-nuclear wacko and alleged journalist Andrew Bolt show himself to be grotesquely ignorant, wrong and ill-informed in the space of just one week? Five times? Ten times? More?

Following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, a 15 metre high tsunami wave slammed into a nuclear plant in Fukushima. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 28,000 people.

For obvious reasons there was widespread concern in Japan, and around the world, about how good a job the Japanese government and the nuclear plant's operators were doing in containing radiation leaking from the smashed plant.

As a sign of just how confident the US government was that the Japanese government could contain radiation from the Fukushima plant, they began preparations for the evacuation of thousands of US military families within hours of the US government learning just how huge and potentially deadly the unfolding disaster actually was.

And, not unexpectedly, news media leaped on the 'Nuclear Crisis' story and ran with it hard, voicing arguments both for and against nuclear power.

This gave Andrew Bolt the opportunity to blame The Greens for nuclear "scaremongering" and to attack "the media" (of which he is one of Australia's most prominent and highly paid) for their coverage.

Well, attack some media.

Attack, primarily, the main newspaper competition to the newspapers owned by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch that publish Andrew Bolt's often incoherent and poorly researched swill.

Bolt began his ill-fated campaign to bludgeon his ideological and political enemies for "fear-mongering" over Fukushima on March 14 :

"...the offensive media fear-mongering..."

"...the media coverage of some papers obsesses instead about trouble at some nuclear reactors..."

This was the only time Bolt linked to Australian newspapers he claimed were over-hyping the radioactive threat posed by the rapidly failing Fukushima nuclear plant. He didn't link to anything published in the newspapers he writes for, of course, because that would have proven what a deceitful idiot he is.

The stories from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Bolt did link to were, in fact, mild and quite low on undue hype and "fear-mongering", in stark contrast, that is, to the newspapers Andrew Bolt works for.






Here's the online front pages from the Bolt-publishing Daily Telegraph & Herald Sun the day before those Age & SMH stories were published.





Even more bizarrely, Andrew Bolt ran this headline on his blog...



....the day after his Herald Sun newspaper ran this front page :



Which proves Bolt doesn't even read the front pages of the main newspaper he writes for, because nowhere, in a week of blog postings, did he acknowledge it was the actually the Herald Sun shouting 'Meltdown'.

Here's more excerpts from Andrew Bolt's blogs & columns in the 10 days following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, interspersed with online & print front pages from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and other Murdoch news media, including The Australian, published during the same period.

Bolt neither linked to nor mentioned any of these in any of his columns or blog posts.

March 15 :

The great green scaremongering gets worse.

March 16 :

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary.

Isn't it though?



March 18 :

We will need to make some people accountable for this monstrous scaremongering once the truth becomes undeniable

March 19 :

The fear of Fukushima is deadlier than the fallout

Utter madness. The journalists who have whipped this up should be ashamed of themselves.

These journalists?



March 20 :

The wild reporting of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency continues, with lurid claims of radioactive plumes, poisoned milk and more. The fact remains, though, that no one has been killed and probably never will.

March 21 :

no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.

...the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.

March 21 :

It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.

These "scaremongers?"



Andrew Bolt, March 22 :

Why worry only about the reactor that has killed no one?

Yes, why worry about a mostly destroyed, exploding, radioactive water spewing nuclear plant when you can, if you read Murdoch news media, worry instead about whether or not Mother Nature is now purposely trying to kill humans?



Her cruelty, eh?

March 11 wasn't, you see, another one of the hundreds of mega-earthquakes and tsunamis that have rocked, smashed and swept across the fault-line islands we now call Japan in the past few dozen million years.....it was instead a Terror Attack on humans by 'cruel' Mother Nature, at least according to the Gold Coast Bulletin :



None of the above headlines or front pages were criticised, or even mentioned, by Andrew Bolt is his 10 day campaign to blame "fear-mongering" over the deadly serious, ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan on "the greens" and non-Murdoch news media.

Not one.

And since it has been confirmed that explosions at Fukushima did indeed claim lives, that vast farming areas of Japan are so polluted with radiation they can't grow essential crops like rice, perhaps for years, or decades, and that radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from the nuclear plant has destroyed lifeblood fishing industries and clouds of radiation have even reached milk and food supplies in the United States, what has Andrew Bolt said?

Nothing.

As soon as Andrew Bolt realised facts and reality had proven him wrong, deceitfully wrong, about Fukushima, over and over again, he simply dropped the story.

Completely.

Like a petulant child who, once told he is wrong, runs to his room and slams the door on the reality of his mistakes.

Bolt has said nothing, not even an update or a correction, about the true scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in weeks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Fukushima disaster has been upgraded to a Level 7 nuclear emergency, the same rating as Chernobyl, the highest rating possible.

Quality journalism indeed.

There Is No Good Outcome For Fukushima Disaster

Your New Reality - Mother Nature : The Ultimate Terrorist



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


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Nobody's Buying The Smears

Julian Assange :

"How do you best attack an organisation?...you attack its leadership… with the dozens of wildly fabricated things said about me in the press."

Rupert Murdoch's news.com.au helps out with the attacks :



None of the Wikileaks-related books being released this week directly calls Assange a "smelly freak". The Murdoch media made up that term, and it's going global.

Commenters at news.com.au, like commenters on similar stories focusing on Assange's appearance and personality, and not the truths revealed by CableGate or other Wikileaks releases, don't buy into this smear campaign :

Can't get the guy by legal means, lets's destroy his character....

Blatant smear campaign cooked up by newscorp, America's government owned media source. Let's focus on the leaks, that's what's important here. Stop trying to spin and discredit this guy with your bogus stories. The people can see right through this charade.

this is nothing more than a grubby personal attack.

This smear is getting more and more ridiculous.

Character assassination by the media on behalf of the banks and politicians. How juvenille!

This guy starts exposing the truth and the vultures start circling. Go Wikileaks.

Come on, let's get real. The man has done something really important and this is the best they can come up with?

What's next? They're going to start calling him a stinky poopy head?

And my favourite :

so he smells like almost every other computer geek on the planet??? How is this news???

Exactly.

Murdoch Backs Gillard

By Darryl Mason

The Daily Telegraph ramps up the mockery of opposition leader Tony Abbott as the last week of the 2010 Federal Election campaign begins.





Ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloids, reaching more than one million Australians, carried front pages and lead editorials endorsing coup prime minister Julia Gillard to be officially elected PM this Saturday.

From The Australian's Media Diary :

Australia’s top-selling newspapers yesterday went for Julia Gillard, with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph (circulation: 630,000) saying every government since 1931 has been given a second chance, so why shouldn’t the ALP get one, too? Melbourne’s Sunday Herald Sun (circulation: 597,000) said “the best interests of Australians are served by the re-election of Labor”.

Tony Abbott doesn't back a carbon tax, Julia Gillard, like Rupert Murdoch, does.

It's going to be an ugly week for Abbott in most of the Murdoch tabloids.

Unless, of course, Tony Abbott agrees, by Thursday, that a carbon tax "of some kind" may be necessary, after all.

UPDATE, August 18 : Both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have denied they plan to introduce a carbon tax in their first term. I'll wait and see on this one, but it's rare that big business doesn't get what it wants. The pressure on Gillard and Abbott to make a carbon tax part of their first term government agenda is not simply localised corporate pressure from those who stand to gain the most from a CT, it is also coming from international banking and investment institutions.

I'll be both pleased and, frankly, amazed if Australia doesn't have a carbon tax by 2013, regardless of who wins on Saturday.

Call It What It Is, A Coup

By Darryl Mason

Did it really only take the mere rumour that prime minister Kevin Rudd was considering a super-profits tax, like he was planning for Australia's richest miners, to be imposed on all of Australia's most profitable corporations, for the coup to commence?

It began, as most major news stories do these days, with a Twitter update. ABC News on Twitter announced before the 7pm news that prime minister Kevin Rudd was fighting a coup :


This news was retweeted (republished) minutes later by ABC managing director Mark Scott to around 30,000 followers, including every journalist, business leader, investor, news junkie in Australia who realises Twitter is where news breaks first now :


ABC political reporter Chris Uhlmann pumped the news out to thousands more on Twitter :


It was no longer conservative media and Liberal Party-allied media fantasy. Their dream of a Julia Gillard prime ministership had come true, many months early, and the Rudd government was tearing itself apart.

Minutes later, ABC News Online published this story :



The original brief ABC News Online story, posted shortly after 7pm Wednesday (now swallowed up and changed through updates) :

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's leadership is under siege tonight from some of the Labor Party's most influential factional warlords.

The ABC has learned that powerful party figures have been secretly canvassing numbers for a move to dump the Prime Minister and replace him with his deputy, Julia Gillard.

It appears she has rebuffed the advances, but it is a measure of the disquiet which has been building in the party since Mr Rudd's approval ratings began their precipitous slide in April.

Ministers and party members have been lining up all week to voice their support for Mr Rudd but behind the scenes, party leaders have been contemplating a leadership change.

Although Mr Rudd looks likely to survive the challenge, news of the attempted coup will undoubtedly weaken him.

It is understood that the only thing holding the Prime Minister up is that his deputy refuses to join in a bid to bring him down.

The essential word "coup" appears to be missing from later stories, all other news sites and nearly all late night TV and radio reports.

A few hours after ABC News Online broke the story, prime minister Kevin Rudd faced a press conference to announce a leadership vote Thursday morning at 9am. He seemed mildly stunned, but firm, and railed against the right factions of the Australian Labor Party, all but shouting that he wouldn't let the Labor right wing take over the government; the same right factions who had almost effortlessly plunged the Australian government into utter chaos, with days of stock market uncertainty to follow.

Frontbenchers of the Rudd government were seen sitting in their Parliament House offices, watching news of the coup unfolding around them on the TV, mouthing words that simplify out as "What The Fuck?"

By 11pm, Julia Gillard was a bigger discussion subject on Twitter than even the World Cup, which is fucking remarkable :



Kevin Rudd's name briefly climbed into the Twitter Trending Topics list, but not for long.

Newspaper front pages aren't online yet, to round up for this, however bizarre, truly historic event in Australian politics and Australian democracy. But the pre-midnight graphics of Australian online news sites clearly spelled out the (perhaps only brief) federal government disaster unfolding. None with more fever than the Murdoch media, who have been all but hysterically demanding Julia Gillard replace Kevin Rudd as prime minister for months.

Adelaide Now :



News.com. au :



The Australian Financial Review :



ABC News :


The Australian :



In fact The Australian was so excited they invented a new word to mark this historic occasion :



The Sydney Morning Herald :



NineMSN :



The Age :



The Herald Sun :



The Daily Telegraph :



How dare Kevin Rudd be "defiant"? Who does he think he is? The democratically elected prime minister of Australia?

The face of our new prime minister, Julia Gillard, as she exited Parliament House last night, after what some media reported as a solid two hours of yelling and raging "discussion" in the prime minister's office :


(screengrab from graphic on The Australian)

If Julia Gillard wins the Labor Party vote to replace Kevin Rudd, she has to call an election. Immediately. As all new leaders of any state or federal government should and must, but rarely, do when they rise to peak power through internal wranglings and not by the vote of the public.

Democracy demands it.

Remember?

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Stop Laughing, This Is Serious Now

By Darryl Mason



The Rudd government will move fast to a federal election - March 2010 - on the off chance that Tony Abbott will quickly find a comfortable zone of support to build on amongst the Australian public. That off chance is in fact a good chance.

We will now be introduced to Tony 'Reasonable Guy' Abbott. The humble man, a man who has faith in God and himself, but wants to Save This Country From The SmugRudd.

This is exactly how the Liberal Party will market Abbott through the election.

Tony The Reasonable Vs Rudd The Smug.

And that approach will work better than you might imagine.

* The Liberal Party will get a boost in the polls, thanks to Tony Abbott. And it will be big enough to shock the poll watchers and cause some nervous titters in the federal government. I say about a 10 point leap for the Libs.

* Tony Abbott, in his first press conference as leader of the Liberal Party, has clearly been practicising his "I'm A Reasonable Guy, I Am" face. Which probably means, at least for a few weeks, the end of those chilling Abbott Death Stare.

* The five key issues Abbott will fight the first quarter 2010 federal election on are those he hooked into at the start of his press conference : delaying the ETS/Carbn Tax, Rudd's Schools Refurbishment Program, The RuddNet, Interest Rates, WorkChoices/Industrial Relations.

* Abbott claims nobody will ever mention "the phrase 'WorkChoices'" again. Fat chance. Abbott will simply rename the reintroduction of Howard's WorkChoices 'Fuck The Workers' policy something else. But the Australian public won't forget.

* Abbott is reminded by journo that he has referred to the reality of climate change as "crap."

"It was a bit of hyperbole, it's not my considered position," he replied.

Does Tony Abbott believe in climate change now? Yes, yes he does.

"(saying climate change was "crap")....was in the context of a heated discussion, where I was trying to argue people around. I do think climate change is real, and that man does make a contribution. The essential point here...is the mechanism for dealing with climate change. We should not be rushing through a new tax so Kevin Rudd has something to take to Cophenhagen."

Tony Abbott's position on the carbon tax yesterday, according to Annnabel Crabbe :

In the face of Mr Hockey's insistence that the matter be a conscience vote, Mr Abbott eventually lost his temper.

"So," he summarised bitterly.

"Malcolm Turnbull's for the ETS. I'm against the ETS. And Joe - nobody knows what the fuck you stand for."

Abbott : "I accept at times I have stuffed up. I also believe that when you become leader, you make a new start. The Australian public is very fair, and they are always ready to give the leader of a political party a fair go."

And they will. Watch the polls next week.

* Abbott The Apologist : "I should take this opportunity to apologise for all my mistakes of the past."

Abbott thinks reality is a confessional booth, and all sins are immediately absolved.

Andrew Bolt's verdict on Tony Abbott :

"unelectable"

That's pretty much what everyone in the media thought, just last night.

News.com.au PreNews Fail earlier today :



Not an unreasonable headline to drop into the system in preparation. The entire press gallery appeared to believe Hockey would win the leadership. I can't think of anyone who predicted Abbott would win. Let me know in comments if you find someone who did.

This is the first thing I wrote as a theme note for this post :

Welcome to the New Ugly Age of Liberal Party Religious Extremism.

Things are about to get very, very nasty indeed.

I don't think they will, after watching the Abbott press conference. They might get shouty, but I think Abbott really does believe, with a self-righteous fervour he appears to have learned to conceal overnight, that he can actually win an election against Kevin Rudd. But he won't win it by hammering Muslims and immigration and embracing, thankfully, nasty minority views.

The truth is, the Rudd government has had a pretty easy time of it, as far as formidable attacks from the Opposition goes, these past two years.

Tony Abbott has polished up his People Skills, and has already debuted his Reasonable Guy persona for the media. We will now see the soft and cuddly Abbott, edged with just enough venom to batter and sometimes better Rudd and Gillard.

Abbott wants to win. And he thinks he can. He Believes He Can Do It.

Look, if anyone in Australia still believes in actual miracles, Tony Abbott is amongst their number.

Can he do it?

Note - The above was mostly written as events unfolded, that's why it reads like a bunch of notes. It is. I just hate the look of 'UPDATE' appearing all over a post. A little * is less intrusive. Something more coherent coming on my theory that Abbott will tone down his religious extremism, not ramp it up. Australians are clearly sick of that kind of crap, the polls show it, the Libs know it. So it will be Tony The Humble Vs Rudd The Smug.

This will be the real battle in parliament. Rudd Vs Gillard. They've been sparring and flirting for years :





.
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Murdoch Journo Calls Reading Newspapers For Free Online "Piracy"

In yet another article by a Murdoch-employed journalist pumping the coming new reality of "You Will Pay!" access restrictions on Digital Rupert 'news' stories, Terry McCrann does exactly as the headline claims :

The obvious problem is of course getting people to pay for online media and especially newspaper content. Like this one, part of Murdoch's News Corp.

A series of problems actually. The technical one -- how do you actually do it?

The, for want of a better word, piracy one -- how do you stop the content being accessed anyway, by the way that links on the internet work.

Or by the way bloggers will adapt to deal with pay walls around online news they want to "klepto".

Murdoch Media : How To Spot A Global Warming 'Conspiracy Theorist'


image sourced from here

From news.com.au :

Global Warming conspiracy theory

This theory claims the science behind current environmental changes - as popularised by Al Gore in the film An Inconvenient Truth - was created for financial gain.

Some believe that governments are using the global warming "myth" to raise taxes and restrict competitive US businesses in Europe - or that it is a United Nations ploy to create a one-world government.

Now you know.

,

Rupert Murdoch Is The King Of Climate Change Fearmongery

By Darryl Mason

An excerpt from a Murdoch media corporate video explaining how global warming awareness, 'climate panic' and carbon neutrality, was seeded into some of the most popular, most world-widely watched shows on TV :



The next time you hear someone ranting about kids and youth having been 'brainwashed' by climate change activists, remind them that Rupert Murdoch news media, movies and TV shows have been responsible for most of the Climate Panic overload. And they did it all, because that's what the boss wanted.

Murdoch employs so-called 'Global Warming Deniers' to write Australian newspaper blogs and front (only some) Fox News shows because he knows it is profitable to sometimes play both sides of a majorly controversial debate, and if he doesn't feed that minority of 'deniers', they will go elsewhere to get the news they're looking for.

Rupert Murdoch Wants Earth Hour To Become Earth Month - Tim Blair & Andrew Bolt Pretend Not To Notice

Murdoch Spreads More Eco-Alarmism - 90% Of World's Population Gone Within 100 Years If Global Warming Isn't Stopped

What Market Is The Murdoch Media Trying To Reach With Fictitious Stories About Children Having Sex?

It was the biggest story for the Australian online Murdoch media yesterday, so does it matter if it was made up?

From news.com.au :

From PerthNow :

They look like a symbol of childhood innocence. But these bracelets are part of an "insidious" game that sees primary school kids perform sex.

And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA.

The exact same story, under the same byline, appeared in the Courier Mail. With a slight change of emphasis to lock in local interest, and concern :

"...these colourful bracelets are behind an "insidious" craze of primary schoolkids performing sex acts that it is feared will soon sweep through Queensland."

WA, Queensland, where will this insidious made-up craze that doesn't drive children into sex spread next?

PerthNow readers were not so easily fooled :

"this is so obviously made up/an urban legend, nice 'news' story"

"'And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA' a fine example of yellow journalism."

"Stupidest news report I've ever seen. Parents don't be concerned if see kids wearing them it means nothing. Ridiculous!"

"These harmless fashion statments are not promoting the sexualisation of youth - this ill-informed journalist is!"

"Theseare all over the u.k media as well with almost identical headlines andstories.why would adults honestly think 11 year old kids would behaving sex behind sheds because the right bracelet was broken!!Hysterical adults on one side and pedo dreamers with wild fantasies ofdelusion on the other.Leave the kids alone!"

This near daily focus on the alleged sex lives of children by the mainstream media,where the stories more often than not turn out to be totally false, is disturbing to say the least.

Incredibly, this trash also made it into The Australian.

Is this the kind of "quality journalism" News CEO John Hartigan thinks Australians will pay to read online?

CosmicJester notes the only sources for this 'story' appear to be a Facebook page and UrbanDictionary.

If the"journalist" had bothered to google these evil sex bracelets, theywould have found out that they are nothing new and they are mainly amoral panic/urban legend designed to scare dim witted journalists andparents.

Snopes.com reveals that this panic goes back till at least 2003 and is a slightly updated urban legend from the 1990's.

UPDATE : The bullshit 'shag bands' story did the trick. It became the most read storyon the CourierMail, News.com.au and PerthNow websites :

Rupert Murdoch's UK Sun, where nothing is beyond the pun, even terrorism :

(via Reddit)

How To Kill A Blog In One Simple Step

The Professional Idiot Shyly, Slyly Asks : Will You Pay To Read My Blog?

The Answers Are Unanimous & Ugly

By Darryl Mason

The anticipation builds for Australia's media corporations and hundreds of nervous journalists. Will readers of Fairfax and Murdoch media pay to access the content they now get for free? Will a You Must Pay! system save Australia's corporate media from crashing and burning?

I'll guess we'll see, with both Murdoch and Fairfax now having announced plans to introduce charges to access some of their online content.

And so a carefully worded proposal from The Professional Idiot to his readers, and the dozens of commenters who supply much of the overall content of his blog, is floated under the ominous heading A Warning To You.

In this proposal, this delicate testing of the waters, The Professional Idiot asks "think it will work?" as he embraces the Digital Rupert New Age Of NewsOTainment mantra of convincing people they should pay to read Murdoch media news and blogs.

The answer from the Boltoids is unanimous, from the casual visitors to the diehard Andrew Bolt true believers and obsessive compulsive commenters. Fuck No, Rupert. We Won't Pay!

It's a nervous time for Murdoch execs and Rupert himself, along with many hundreds of Australian employees, they lost a lot of money, ad sales are down anything from 20-40%, or more, they have to give away thousands of copies of the supposedly blue chip asset, The Australian, everyday in the foyers of dozens of office towers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, to keep advertisers happy, the old business model is rivering blood. They're fucking scared.

A few years back, Rupert Murdoch looked at the blog phenomena and decided that kind of content was going to become a big part of the new digital media future he was reluctantly forced to quickly try and get a grasp of.

Rupert Murdoch loved that prolific comments provided so many hits and free content for blogs, and on news stories. He was overwhelmed by the idea that there were all these independent bloggers doing what they did for free, for free! not like all those real journalists with their demands for....expenses and....sunlight and.....chairs, and all the rest of it. Rupert seemed to understand a few years ago that the blogger provided the starting point, the ignition switch, for the comments to flow, adding content, drawing readers back again and again, even if they weren't commenting, just to read what everyone else was saying.

So snap up a couple of independent bloggers, turn columnists into sorta-bloggers, and load their pages with ads. Oh, wait. The arse just completely fell out of ad revenue. Fuck, look at it go. Okay, what now? Let's make 'em pay!

Rupert fantasised, or believed the exciting blitherings of some 22 year old digital maverick who convinced him, either in all seriousness or in jest, that one day people will be happy to pay to read blogs. Yes, they will. They'll pay to read them and still write pages of comments for free. And they'll do it happily.

This idea must have been particularly tasty to Rupert : they will pay me to contribute free content to my media sites which I'll then charge others to read! Brilliant!

Well, if Rupert Murdoch did believe some scenario like that, he can forget about it right now.

That business model is already bagged and slabbed.

The daily readers of The Professional Idiot, the most popular (at least as far as hits go) of all the Australian Murdoch blogs, have filed their complaints about soon having to Pay To Read, and the complaints are many, and annoyed, and tone dark with the sound of soon to be departing eyeballs and interest :

"Shareholders should see this a sign of dementia - they should to tell him to enjoy his retirement and move over for his sons."

"Pay to post on news blogs? Tell ‘im he’s dreamin’."

"Once again MSM is planning to control what we read. I think it will actually bring a lot more underground blogs up which can only be a good thing. MSM is merely a propoganda machine anyway."

"It would kill blogging and kill your readership. It would kill discussion and debate on important issues."

"I trust that if Murdoch is planning on charging us to read your blog he’ll also be paying us for our contributions. Some of the entries posted by amateurs demonstrate more originality of thought, and indeed a higher degree of technical savvy, than articles written by Murdoch’s ‘quality journalists’."

"I’m sorry Andrew, I love reading your blog, but if I have to pay I will spend my time elsewhere. The content is great, but at the end of the day it’s entertainment and there is plenty of FREE entertainment on the net to choose from."

"Charge to visit the blog and the advertisers will walk out the same door as the readers."

"lol....paying for propaganda or half the story supplied by the murdoch globalist empire...the world according to rupert and his minions will need a truth and integrity injection before they get a cash injection..."

"I wont support a pay wall. Uncle Rupert will be lucky to make this stick. Lets say China decides to print News Ltd stuff for free. Is Rupert going to shirt front Beijing? Worked real well last time he tried."

"Pretty sad business sense. Loyalty was once a valued customer trait - not anymore - bleed the bastards dry."

"NewsCorp is mostly left wing dribble not much better than the Age. I look forward to their downfall."

"NOTE TO THE INCOMPETANT IDIOTS running NewsCorp: If you want more readers, sack your lying left wing arts degree journalists, and hire real journalists who will write the truth and and not the politically correct dribble most of them write."

"News Ltd are the bastions of the right wing point of view. If News Ltd make all their site user pays they are giving up ‘free’ news to the left."

"In terms of this blog. Nobody, except Andrew’s diehard supports are going to pay to access this blog. Then there will be so few people her that it just wont be the same. Very little debate just a love feast between a few."

"This is a business decision by someone who don’t understand the web."

"As much as I like you Andrew, if Rupe puts you behind a pay-wall then this is good bye."

"I ain’t gonna work"

"Like pornography, there are plenty of people willing to look up the news online when it’s free, but when it comes to paying for it, very few will do so."

"If Rupert wants to charges us to do so then I will cancel delivery of my Herald Sun. Therefore, the local newsagent will lose a customer and I imagine I won’t be the only one ‘pulling the plug’."

"Pay to read the news, and pay to post on news blogs? In a pig’s eye!"

"If he goes ahead with this it will be the worst decision he has made and one which will see the end of his media empire."

And countless examples of short and simple :

"No."

"No."

"Hell, no."

"I won't pay."

The major problem seems to be that most of The Professional Idiot's daily readers think the rest of the Murdoch online media is worthless trash riven with pagan socialist secret muslim leftie journos and global warming propagandising Rudd worshippers.

They don't want to pay to read Bolt's blog, and they'll be fucked if they will pay some sort of overall fee to get access to read the blog and the rest of the Herald Sun or Adelaide Advertiser, they don't sound interested in other Murdoch content outside of Bolt's blog, and they openly mock the daily Murdoch news as celebrity guff and Green-brainwashed fluff not worth a single click.

So it would appear the only way to capture any money from the Boltoids would be to charge readers for access only to The Professiona ldiot's blog, and not some package drawing in other Murdoch content.

If Rupert Murdoch is seriously considering charging to read a blog, or to comment at a blog, or to read comments, how much would he need to charge to make it worthwhile for the blogger, and to pay for the admin and moderators and researchers?

A You Must Pay! blog has to spot on, no mistakes, constant postings, breaking news as it happens, instant moderation and updated comments, all of this around the clock. The complaints from those who pay will be vast, grating and time-consuming.

Basically, Bolt's blog would need to become something of a news portal and blog, with quick turnover of stories, columns, comments. If Bolt doesn't then rely on free labour from students and interns, he's going to have be charging 10,000 readers at least $50 a year to make it worthwhile, or even break even.

But he's not going to find 10,000 who will pay to read his blog. Maybe a thousand, if he's lucky, more likely only a few hundred, and then only if the price is low.

If you could charge to read blogs, more bloggers would be doing it. It doesn't work. Unless you're a time traveller and can go check out the future for your subscribers and give them advice on how to avoid falling tree limbs or cyclones or shitty stock or house-losing divorces, people won't pay to read a blog.

And nor should they.

A likely scenario is that Bolt, like Tim Blair, Piers Akerman and Janet Albretchsen will be bundled together in a single subscription, monthly or yearly. You pay for The Idiot and get some bonus Planet Janet and Ak Attack. Such a subscription service might work on e-readers and iPhones, where the charge is added to your account, simple, but the problem remains that most of their online competition will not be charging, and everything they do charge for will end on fair use sites anyway, or liberally quoted in blogs.

They could call it The Sad Conservative Ranter Value Bundle.

Bolt's got maybe 30,000 readers who visit his site at least once or twice a week, that's a very generous estimate. The daily readership is obviously much less. It might be only 5000 or 6000 readers, for the most heavily promoted blog site in Australia.

Could Rupert charge Boltoid's $100 a year if The Professional Idiot got in and interacted with subscribers in the way George Mega already does at The Australian? Actually talked to them? Maybe a daily video of The Professional Idiot's eye-rolling, girlish shoulder shrugging and impudent whining that only Premium Content Bolt readers can experience?

The shock to come that should already be so obvious to professional media execs who get paid to know this kind of shit is this : most of The Professional Idiot's audience is attracted to the blog because of the range of intelligent to crazed to WTF? comments his blog attracts. When Murdoch starts charging to read the blog, the comments will disappear, the throb of life of anger of laughter of mockery of bullying of hysterical attacks of slayings and occasional good-natured cajoling will be gone.

The Professional Idiot's commenters mostly know this, because they are people who won't pay, and won't come back if they're expected to.

I know that market watchers have poured over all those comments at The Professional Idiot's as he tries to gauge reaction to a You Must Pay! version of his blog, and other Murdoch online media content. The reaction from Boltoids could not have been any more disastrous.

There may be You Must Pay! content on Murdoch media sites by January, 2010, but it seems unlikely to include Murdoch bloggers, particularly The Professional Idiot and Tim Blair.

Good luck to them if they can make it work.

Digital Rupert Wants You To Pay To Read His News So He Can Datamine Your Personal Info For Advertisers

"News Is Very Expensive To Create"

By Darryl Mason

Here's Richard Freudenstein, CEO of Digital Rupert, explaining to the recent Sydney Advertising & Marketing Summit how the Murdoch media will not only charge for online content but will also suck up personal details about readers and make them available to advertisers.

In short, the Murdoch media want you to pay so they can target ads directly at you.

"The problem is that the traditional advertiser-supported model is not enough, by itself, to pay for the level of investment in journalism that society needs.

So to make up the difference we have to look at charging for content.

The question is having been given it for free, will people now pay for online news content?

The first thing to remember is that people happily pay for news every day.

Indeed nearly 19 million newspapers are bought in Australia every week.

So clearly there is a healthy market for news.

But the future for Murdoch media is not newspapers, that old "dinosaur industry" as Stephen Mayne calls them, but Digital Rupert's holy grail/messiah: The E-Reader.

"a high-definition full colour e-reader, containing all your favourite newspapers and magazines from around the world...."

Sounds awesome.

But wait....

"It will deliver high definition ads which, when touched, will run a video, give detailed product information, download a brochure, or run a price comparison across local retailers.

An exciting proposition, I’m sure you’ll agree."

So you will have to pay to have some hyper-reality ad leaping out of the middle of a story shouting your name and telling you how absolutely rocking you will look in this new electric car.

Who will this paid content e-reader near-future world of Murdoch news be actually serving. The consumer, or the advertiser?

Some refreshing honesty from Digital Rupert's CEO :

Indeed, uppermost in our minds is that whatever the platform is, it must work effectively for not only our readers, but also for you – our agencies and advertisers.

We’re confident that the combination of print, online, mobile and e-reader presents a terrific opportunity for advertisers.

We’ll have a large, highly engaged opt-in audience who are open to advertising messages.

Now it sounds fucking shit, particularly if I'm paying for it.

And we all know what 'opt-in' means. If you don't read the contract and/or agreement carefully enough and see the part where you have to 'opt-out' to stop the bombardment of advertisers, you will automatically be 'opted-in.' Some still seem surprised to learn that someone else can own the rights of their photos when they publish them on social networking sites.

But here's the hook for those who want to drive you bonkers with ads, it's the real brilliance of getting people to pay for online content in the first place: the customer be able to sign on to get the news anonymously, there will be mandatory details that will have to be supplied, along with the payments. Not solely for security reasons, but so your personal details and interests and online habits can be auctioned to advertisers. Data-mined in other words.

"....we’ll have their full registration details – location and demographic details. We’ll know their consumption habits and we’ll be able to target them across multiple platforms."

I don't know if you've ever been "targeted across multiple platforms", but it doesn't sound pleasant.

So this is the future of Murdoch "quality journalism"?

It's the digital equivalent of what one of my old newspaper bosses told me about the value of news and feature stories in his publications : "They fill the space around the ads. They give readers something else to look at."

And finally this revelation from the Digital Rupert CEO :

But when it comes down to it, people want the news, and they want news they can trust.

The problem is that such news is very expensive to create.

Did he just confirm that the Murdoch media "create news" instead of simply reporting it?

There is a very exciting e-reader news revolution about to begin, but there will be many who will find a way to make it profitable without data-mining their customers and storming their brains with electronic advertising designed to distract you from what you're trying to read, or watch, or hear.

"The Media Can't Be Trusted To Tell The Truth"

By Darryl Mason

Jonathan Holmes, host of Media Watch, in a debate, lists a series of recent debacles from the mainstream media :

On July 21, four days after the Jakarta hotel bombings, Seven News reported: ‘‘Another bomb has exploded in Jakarta. The device went off just moments ago at a building near the Australian embassy.’’ No, it didn’t. No bomb, no unexploded bomb, no suspicious package. Nothing but a couple of hoax phone calls.

On June 20, the first edition of The Daily Telegraph and other News Ltd papers read: ‘‘Revealed: Email that could topple a Government.’’ That email may yet topple an opposition leader. But it won’t do any harm to the journalist who ‘‘revealed’’ its content, or the editors who decided to publish it, even though it turned out to be a fake.

Then there’s page one of The Sunday Telegraph on March 15: ‘‘PAULINE BETRAYED. Provocative: A young Pauline Hanson pouts for the camera in racy lingerie … ’’

The Sunday Telegraph editor promised to quit if the 'Hanson' photos turned out to be fake. They were fake, the editor didn't quit.

Holmes is just scratching the surface. He argues one of the biggest problems gouging away at the credibility of mainstream media today is not solely a lack of journalists, or highly skilled journalists, but the Deadline Now! atmosphere of 24 hour breaking news on TV, on radio, and online.

Fewer and fewer people are under pressure to produce more and more. That means less time to research, less time to write, less time to check, fewer subeditors to knock copy into shape.

Which is why the media, arguably, can be trusted less than ever to tell the truth.

Holmes posits a greater problem, however, about what modern journalism in mainstream media actually means :

"The media are not in the business of telling us the truth. The media are in the business of telling us stories.

"That simple little word dominates any professional conversation between journalists. I’m working on a story. It’s a good story, a great story, a balltearer of a yarn. Or, it’s a dud story, it’s a non-story, there’s no story.

"The idea of the story, of course, dates back to the time when people made little distinction between fact and fiction. Was Homer telling us the truth about the Trojan Wars? Did the Cyclops really have one eye, or Perseus winged feet? Does it matter? They’re great stories.

"They’re about love, and fear, and rage, and jealousy, and courage in adversity – the same emotions that 2500 years later sell copies of the Tele, or attract viewers to A Current Affair.

"But the media, of course, are supposed to tell us true stories."

How 20th century of you, Mr Holmes. This is the age of manufactured news media realities. The story is everything. Does it matter if it doesn't turn out to be true? It's fun for a few days, and the truth reality is always a bit of a bummer.

The reality a series of stories builds up, even if they are only brushed lightly with the truth, in the media over days, or weeks, or years, becomes for some all the truth they need to know. Or want to know.

Why shatter the manufactured reality with too many distracting facts?

Today, if you want to live in a reality where the future of the planet faces "dire consequences" resulting from our addiction to old energy sources and only the wisdom of carbon tax profiteers like Al Gore and Rupert Murdoch can save us all, you can follow certain columnists, haunt certain news sites and blog sites, all of which will mostly continue to enforce that reality. And addd to it.

Or you can believe the climate crisis is one big fat conspiracy created by those who stand to most benefit from the implementation of a global carbon tax.

You can, depending on the radio shows you listen to and the newspapers and bloggers you read, live in Sydney and truly believe that you are under constant direct threat from Al Qaeda (via Somalia/Lebanon/Pakistan/Iran) linked Islamist terrorists.

You can easily find enough material on a handful of mainstream news sites to reinforce that dangerous reality most days, and ignore anything that tells you otherwise, that threatens to bite away at the manufactured reality you enjoy with those annoying teeth of truth.

Whatever your choice of fear, it's easy to find a selection of news media and online screeds to feed it and sustain it. You can get Google to send you news alerts every time a story or blog post involving your favourite fear is published online.

Personally, I live in perpetual fear of both UFO invasions and surviving into the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a massive meteor impact. Fortunately, my double fear is countered by supreme confidence that the world-crushing meteor will arrive just as the UFO invasion begins and destroy them all, resulting in the meteor being obliterated into harmless but beautiful fiery dust in our night skies.

You'd be amazed at how stories find their way online from across the world every week about looming UFO invasions and planet-killing meteor strikes. Then again, you may already know. You probably read the mainstream media as well.

The rest of the Jonathan Holmes piece is here.

You Say "Significant Slump", I Say "Fraction"

Duncan Riley asks did John Hartigan, CEO of News Limited, deceive the market when he claimed, on July 1, that :

...newspaper ad revenue in Australia has been growing – not declining over the past 5 years as it has in the US and the UK. Even in the past year, the decline in ad revenue in Australia is a fraction of what’s been happening overseas.

ABC’s AM reported on August 6 :

Rupert Murdoch says his papers in Australia have endured a 30 per cent slump in classified ads and a 12 per cent drop in display ads in the fourth quarter, and that’s thanks mainly to a drop-off in car and real estate and employment advertisements,

Riley zeros in on the use of the word "fraction" by Hartigan, and rightly so.

Who Just Lost Another Few Billion Trying To Convince You That Celebrities Are Important And That People Who Don't Look Like You Can't Be Trusted?

Witnessing The Death Throes Of An Old Media Dinosaur

By Darryl Mason

A short round-up of the global losses of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, culled from this story :

* News Corporation net loss in 12 months - $US3.4 billion.

* Full year operating profit drops by 32%

* Growth in cable TV fails to compensate for massive losses in films, books, magazines, newspapers.

* In April/May/June quarter 2009, News Corp. smashed by $203 million in losses. In comparison, same quarter 2008 saw $1.1 billion profit.

* Advertising revenue for Murdoch's British papers - The Sun, The Times, News Of The World - plunged by 14%.

* Murdoch's 20th Century Fox film division, profits slumped from $1.24 last year to $848 million this year.

* Profits from Murdoch's Fox TV division - US, UK, Asia - were slashed by more than 80%.

No wonder ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch was reading, grimly, by phone, from a prepared statement when he tried to explain to shareholders that while the news about News Corp. was shockingly bad, next year was looking better because he intended to make people....umm....pay to read the news online.

Pay to read the news online? Who didn't laugh when they heard that the first time? This is a visionary strategy to save a massive global corporation from destruction?

Who is this crazy old man and what has he done with the Dirty Digger?

Stephen Mayne, the founder of the profitable online news site, Crikey, was interviewed on ABC Midday News on Thursday, as news broke of the ex-Australian's media empire being blitzed by billions in losses.

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"The problem Rupert has got is that he is in the dinosaur industry of newspapers"

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Mayne doesn't necessarily think that the ex-Australian will be left completely fucked and bombed by the 'You Will Pay!' experiment, but it's not looking good. Mayne believes the Murdoch product soon to be for sale is not good enough, and Murdoch will always be ten steps from disaster as long as he continues printing actual newspapers.

"I think for Rupert Murdoch to declare that the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph, every one of his newspapers in the world, and he is the world's biggest newspaper owner, for them all to charge is a very risky proposition," Mayne said. "And I predict they won't get much revenue, and they'll simply lose a whole heap of (reader) traffic."

Mayne said Murdoch's biggest problem was not simply convincing people to read Pay To Read online, but to give them enough reasons to want to pay.

"A lot of what Rupert does isn't particularly high quality, and if there's other high quality material from Fairfax, or other rivals in Britain and the US, that is still free, then everyone will just go to their websites. So you can only charge if (all the other news media) is charging and if your content is particularly fantastic," Mayne said.

"So the big challenge for Rupert, is to round up all the big newspaper publishers around the world and to get them to all collude and agree to change the business model. And that will be very hard given they all compete so aggressively."

The ex-Australian will continue to suffer while he clings to the 20th century.

"The problem Rupert has got is that he is in the dinosaur industry of newspapers," Mayne said.

"The industry is collapsing, his advertising revenue is down 20% across the board. Google has cut everybody's lunch. And i think the only real way he can get out of it is to get companies like Google to start paying him money in return for aggregating their content. Get everyone together, start charging, and then do a big deal with Google to try and scoop up some of their billions in annual advertising revenue derived from aggregating newspaper content."

Doing away with actual newspapers, Mayne predicts, will be an inevitable part of returning Big Media to shareholder-applauding profit. That is, if profits enough to survive are even possible again for a corporation as large and expensive and bloated with seven figure executives as Murdoch's News Corp.

"I think newspapers...it's a dying industry," Mayne said.

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"Publishers have been screwing advertisers for 100 years. Technology has now turned the tables"

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Economist Alan Kholer says Rupert Murdoch is crashing and burning because advertising income online compared to print has proved to be so gaping :

....who was to know that the price of online advertising would settle at about a tenth of the price of print advertising?

This is, after all, a classic business event: a technological change that causes a price reduction. And the result is always the same - lower costs.

While absurdly high print advertising prices (in print) have subsidised large editorial budgets, and low or zero cover prices, it won’t do it online.

It is the fact that the price of advertising has collapsed. Murdoch’s real problem is that the balance of power between publishers and advertisers has entirely flipped.

Advertisers and their agencies now rule the roost. They refuse to pay more than a tenth or so per unit of what they pay in print, and they demand much better service, such as only paying for actual new customers, not simply for “branding” that can’t be measured.

And why shouldn’t they act this way? The publishers have been screwing them for a hundred years, charging outrageous prices to access their treasured audiences. Technology has now turned the tables.

We are merely witnessing the death throes of an oligopoly’s hubris.

An editorial in Crikey ouchingly brands the newspapers Murdoch clings to as "legacy media" :

"...this is all a gigantic gamble by desperate newspaper owners to plug the deep cracks in their business models that have turned newspapers from 20th century money machines into 21st century legacy media.

Saying that quality journalism is not cheap to produce is self-evident. But the fundamental problem for most quality newspapers is not that people aren’t paying for that journalism, it’s that advertisers — especially classified advertisers — have found a better and cheaper medium than newspapers. And it’s the advertisers, not the readers, who pay for the quality journalism that made newspapers so profitable and powerful.

Unless readers are prepared to replace the lost classified advertising revenues — which in the case of a newspaper like The Sydney Morning Herald would require every buyer to pay something like $250 a year extra for the content — the problem of funding quality journalism won’t be solved.

I've been a newspaper junkie since my early teens. I brought 2 or 3 newpapers a day, every day, for decades, until about 3 years ago. Now I only regularly buy weekend newspapers.

I spent about $10 on newspapers last weekend, and except for a Louis Nowra piece in The Australian, most of the weekend paper pile remains unread. I read most of the news elsewhere online, the day before. I can barely bother to read columnists like Greg Sheridan, Philip Adams, Miranda Devine and Sun Herald, Sunday Telegraph and The Australians editorials, online, let alone devoting offline time to getting through them.

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It seems an unimaginable reality. What do you mean they don't print newspapers anymore?

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None of the weekend papers feel essential anymore. It doesn't feel like I'm going to miss out if I don't buy them and read them comprehensively. When I was in my early 20s, I often chose buying newspapers over buying Saturday morning breakfast. The idea of doing that now seems insane.

There are probably thousands of bloggers, and dozens of indie media sites, run by juiced New Media 20-somethings, who snort and cackle and giggle with delight at what is happening to the old corporate media these days, and some seem to take a particular delight in believing that actual newspapers won't be found some day soon in racks at the 7-11, or piling up the gutters on windy days.

It's seems an unimaginable reality. What do you mean they don't print newspapers anymore?


You had to wait for the newspaper once. You had to wait for it to go on sale, or for the newsagent to open. There was many a 2am Saturday or Sunday morning when I haunted all night newsagents in Kings Cross or Central Station (coming home from work, or from seeing gigs) hassling to get bundles cut open so I could get what I wanted and rush home to read them before sleep overwhelmed.

Now I can just read all that vital news on an iPhone as I stumble home instead.

And if there are days when I can't be bothered to visit online news sites, let alone pick up an actual paper, I'm confident that the array of writers, journos, media junkies, I follow on Twitter will alert me to plenty of quality news from all over the world, including much that I would never bothered to read had they not recommended it.

And Twitter is the nail through the palms of all the big, vastly expensive news media online today. Murdoch execs in particular still seem to have no idea what this instant news sharing system is going to become. None of them dare to say the word 'Twitter' out loud right now, even as they loudly repeatedly denounce the legitimate competition for eyeballs and attention from one person blogs, as they attempt to degrade and discredit the credibility of a thrilling storm of independent New News Media.

"You need us to tell you what's going on."

Really? Do we?

It doesn't feel like that anymore.

All media execs are terrified of Twitter. Trying to fit a chunk of news or info into just 140 character posts is is training millions how to write clearly, succinctly. Twitter is training people in how to reduce an explanation of what is happening to them, or people they know, or people they've just read about, into a handful of words. Experienced twooters can compress a 1200 word front page story in The Australian to its most essential facts spread across a couple of posts.

If you want to know the latest news on anything, tossing subject key words into the Twitter search engine more often than not delivers you the very latest on the news you're interested in, sometimes literally a minute or less after it happens.

The idea that the average person needs a journalist, or a columnist, to explain to them what is happening in their local community, their city or state, their country, to interpret and filter information, feels very 20th century.

As 20th century as that file pile of weekend newspapers a few feet from me, that now feel like more of a chore than a pleasure to leaf through.

I live without daily newspapers now, and I'm sure I've almost been rehabbed enough by a world of online news to dump the weekend newspaper habit as well.

If the Old Media now so desperately trying to save itself from financial ruin and irrelevancy can't convince a full-blown news junkie like me to buy their gear in print or online, what hope do they have to convince the majority who have only a casual news habit?

I feel absolutely no devotion or allegiance to any Old Media. What do they serve up that I can't get elsewhere online, if not immediately, then a bit later from elsewhere?

I'd rather pay Fairfax columnist Annabel Crabbe $30 a year to write her columns for her own blog and then alert me to those stories via Twitter than to pay Fairfax $100 or more a year for a whole slew of content I don't want, don't need, won't read. If Crabbe charged, say, $60 a year and mailed me a book she'd either written or one she highly recommended, I'd sign up tomorrow.

To me, the biggest problem the Old Media in Australia, all over the world, face right now is overcoming the dawning reality that they are no longer essential.

The monopoly on information and news enjoyed for so long by a handful of media corporations has been smashed by the Big Free, by thousands of blogs and independent news sites and comment boards on MySpace and on aggregators (and summarisers) like Digg and Reddit and free access forums on anything you can imagine, contemplate or question.

Information and news is Free, and that cannot be changed back now. No matter what former gods of public manipulation and opinion shaping like Rupert Murdoch try and do, the sharing of news and information can never go back to what it once was.

Those days are over.

Curiously, while the media giants are being stripped by market forces of their wealth and influence, there are plenty of blogs and independent news media who are doing very well for themselves right now, and free information exchangeries like Twitter only help to expand their online audiences.

When the true desperation sets in for media giants like Murdoch, and it wont be long now, the real down and nasty war against all that enthusiastically free competition from bloggers and indie news sites will begin. And it will be an ugly.

And pathetic.


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