Praying To The Digital Gods

By @DarrylMason

The Australian takes its column inches hogging obsession with the iPad to hilarious extremes:



How obsessed with the iPad is The Australian?

Utterly.

It's almost as if the newspaper's entire existence hangs on trying to convince 50,000 or more Australians to buy, and keep buying, its $4.99 per month (for now) iPad application. Which, of course, it does. Particularly considering owner Rupert Murdoch is planning to phase out the print edition within the next two or three years and shut down the printing presses forever, a Death To Newspapers move Murdoch described in September 2009 as "great" :

“I do certainly see the day when more people will be buying their newspapers on portable reading panels than on crushed trees.

“Then we’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great.”

Mumbrella noticed how obsessed The Australian has been with the iPad, and did some Googling. Since the start of February 2010, The Australian has run more than three dozen stories about the iPad, how absolutely brill it is, why it will save newspapers and how and why you should buy The Australian iPad app.

In just two days (April 12-13) The Australian ran at least six stories on the subject, most shamelessly hawking the digital tablet to readers in pure advertorial speak. On May 24, The Australian broke its own record by running four stories on the iPad.

Good luck to them. If their launch product is anything to go by - thin on content, visually bland - they're going to need it.

More From Mumbrella Here

Why Rupert Murdoch Loves The iPad

By Darryl Mason

Media readers, like the iPad, will effectively, eventually, shut out the free news competition :

Sweeting says he thinks many of the major media companies would love to see computers discourage people from searching the open Internet for content.

"I think the media companies will leap at this," he says. "It offers them the opportunity to essentially re-create the old business model, wherein they are pushing content to you on their terms rather than you going out and finding content, or a search engine discovering content for you."

Overhead-heavy bloated media corporations, like Murdoch's, who want to "put a tollbooth on the ocean" are betting the house that locked up media readers will save their outdated 20th century business models.

But they seem to be the only ones who believe that there will be enough people willing to pay to make it profitable enough to continue paying corporate media executives like Rupert Murdoch tens of millions of dollars a year.

Media Watch chewed through these issues last night.

Murdoch newspapers like The Australian are already planning to do away with their print versions, at least on a daily basis. It's the only way they can survive. The sums have been done and print must go. Here's The Australian's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell :

"When you remove the fixed costs in newspapers, they become much more viable. So if you think of a newspaper without paper and ink and petrol and trucks, you're taking out between 60 and 70 per cent of the cost base....

"But I guess my view is that the core of the business is your ability to dream up ideas to create news - the things that we chase each day. "

"Dream up ideas to create news." What a curious thing to say, or to reveal about how the newsrooms of a corporate news empire actually work.

And you thought their job was to simply report the news.

September 17, 2009 : Rupert Murdoch Celebrates Death Of Newspapers : "It's Going To Be Great!"

October 2009 : The Australian Tries To Rally Support For Murdoch's War On Free News Media