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Murdoch Demands Kindle Users' Info
In yet another move to display how antiquated and completely ignorant of digital culture he is, Rupert Murdoch has started demanding that Amazon hand over user info for all Kindle users. This demand comes right after Murdoch just finished negotiating a larger share of revenue from Amazon sales. At least Amazon hasn't decided to comply with this request yet. "'As I've said before, the traditional business model has to change rapidly to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their old margins of profitability,' Murdoch said. 'Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting.'"
What the hell is this? Twitter? some blag? Where on earth is the link to TFA?
Quality journalism really isn't cheap, Slashdot can't even bother to link to an actual source for any of this information.
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What does Rupert Murdoch, of all people, know about Quality Journalism?
...but only to those who turn over their personal information and credit card billing info.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/05/murdochs-ultimatum-to-amazon-give-us-the-names-or-else/
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
WTG Slashdot! At first I thought a story that was posted without a link or attribution of source was a mistake. But then I realized it's really just a super-subtle acknowledgment of John Hughes' passing....
"My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Rupert Murdoch pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Here's one.
Would have been helpful to include in the original article.
Murdoch's ultimatum to Amazon: Give us Kindle subscriber names or else
Jeff Bercovici
Aug 5th 2009 at 7:00PM
Rupert Murdoch's mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. High-handed treatment from Amazon, that is.
On News Corp.'s (NWS) fiscal-year-end earnings call with analysts, the notoriously shoot-from-the-hip mogul suggested that The Wall Street Journal will cease to be available on the Kindle e-reader unless Amazon starts offering a more generous revenue split and more publisher-friendly policies.
Murdoch acknowledged that the Journal recently negotiated a slightly larger share of the revenues Amazon gets from selling Kindle subscriptions to the paper, "but it's not a big number, and we're not encouraging it at all because we don't get the names of the subscribers," he said. "Kindle treats them as their subscribers, not as ours, and I think that will eventually cause a break with us."
Jeff Bezos, consider yourself warned.
On the call, News Corp. announced adjusted full-year operating income of $3.6 billion, a 32 percent year-over-year decline largely attributable to the advertising recession afflicting print and broadcast television. Much of the call was devoted to News Corp.'s intensive drive to get consumers to pay directly for digital content of all kinds. Murdoch revealed that the company plans to introduce pay models for all its news websites by the end of the next fiscal year. Moreover, he said that it won't be only the newspaper sites that adopt this change; foxnews.com, he said, will also start charging for content. "It has a huge and loyal and profitable [web] audience already," he said.
"As I've said before, the traditional business model has to change rapidly to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their old margins of profitability," Murdoch said. "Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting."
Other highlights from the call:
-Murdoch on this year's television advertising: "We're doing well, or we think we're doing well, on the pricing, but we'll probably keep more back for the spot market than last year....There's money around. I'm not saying there's a vast recovery or anything like that, but we are in the process of reaching understandings with a lot of advertisers."
-On whether News Corp. will develop its own e-reader to compete with the Kindle: "We're not in the hardware business."
-On rumors that Guardian Media Group may close the Observer: "I did read that document that went to the staff of the Guardian that swore allegiance everlastingly to the Guardian but said nothing about the Observer. I think I made the same conclusions as everybody."
-On whether News Corp. would buy the Observer: "Hell no. Why?"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sure, *quality* journalism probably isn't cheap, but if Rupert's paying much for Fox News-caliber journalism, he's getting ripped off.
For those of you joining late, for the first few minutes the Slashdot story didn't link to the Daily Finance story.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...after which I will send my Kindle back to amazon for a full refund. If necessary I'll invoke VISA's help to charge it back. It wasn't part of the contract for amazon to erase my 1984 book off my kindle, or to reveal my info to third party assholes. I can tolerate some things but this passes the line.
Aside-
I mentioned elsewhere that amazon is holding ~$500 of my sales as a seller in limbo. Well a day after I said that publicly they immediately refunded the money, but still kept $79 for themselves. I eventually tracked-down the reason - an asshole woman in California bought a Zenith DTV box from me, and even though I already provided Amazon with proof-of-delivery, they decided to keep the $79 and refund it back to this woman. So she successfully stole my property, with amazon's help.
Grrr. I'm really starting to hate amazon.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I can see why he expects this information... he's a publisher who's spent the lion's share of his career dealing in print media. If people were subscribing to the dead-tree edition of the Journal, he would have not just their names but their home addresses and probably phone numbers as well. Now subscribers want to pay for the same publication--the Wall Street Journal--and the publisher expects to have the same information they would if they were sending the physical newspaper. What's the big deal? Just cause something is delivered electronically rather than via the post, that makes basic subscriber information suddenly privacy-threatening?
I'm as paranoid about privacy concerns as the next [rational] person, but I don't see what the big deal is here.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
It looks to me like he is not requesting every kindle users info (as the headline suggests). But he is requesting that when a user subscribes to The Wall Street Journal via a kindle, they are a customer of TWSJ and not Amazon. Sounds reasonable to me. That way the user could change devices and keep their subscriptions.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Moreover, he said that it won't be only the newspaper sites that adopt this change; foxnews.com, he said, will also start charging for content. "It has a huge and loyal and profitable [web] audience already," he said.
Now hes CHARGING us for his bullshit propaganda? Jeeeeeeeeez.......
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
He may be old, and he may be singing a tune you don't like, but he was old when he decided to change the media business, and he did. Massively and permanently. The changes may suck, or may not, but pretending it's pretty naive to think that because he is old, or doesn't do things the way you want, it follows that he is weak and ineffectual. He is neither.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Quality journalism is not cheap...
How can something that doesn't exist be expensive?
That's "Cristal", you prole. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In yet another move to display how antiquated and completely ignorant of digital culture he is...
I expect this kind of bias from slashdot comments, but when the articles themselves are slanted...
Let us formulate our own opinions before you shove yours down our throat.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Sony is usually held as an example of a consumer-friendly, trustworthy corporation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
(don't mean you, SatanicPuppy, I mean Murdoch). The Rotten Bastard's right - quality journalism costs money. The "I can get anything for free, so why should I pay" ethos (in my opinion) leads to watered down crap being offered for free. People cannot make a living off "Free". Look at what we have now - 'free' news sources that don't give us much news but give us a whole lotta opinion masquerading as news (blogs, anyone?). It costs nothing to post your opinion based off of factoids gleaned from other sources, without even considering bias. But to produce honest-to-Gawd news? That's a quality product, produced by professionals who know how to separate fact from bias, and how to tell the difference between the two? That is worth money. The Genocidal Tyrant's completely within his rights to demand that Amazon give him an increased percentage of profits PLUS the names and contact info of all the WSJ subscribers through the Kindle. He should have them anyway. The WSJ has not suffered any decrease in quality - it's political bent is well known but the Rotten Bastard actually kept one of his promises and continued to support its journalistic integrity. I was worried as everyone else when he bought it, but then I was surprised to learn that the WSJ actually increased its quality. I don't read the WSJ for its opinions, I read it because I want good, factual business news that cuts through all the BS and tells it as it is. And that costs money. Furthermore (in my opinion), we need to face facts: In order to get good quality journalism, we have to PAY for it. Journalism was always supported by Print advertising. Now, it's going to be supported by pay-to-view websites. Free only lasts a while in an economic boom (anyone remember the dot-com rush where EVERYTHING was free), then reality sets in and you have to pay for what you get. And I will be happy to pay for it. I will pay for honest, high quality journalism (I already do), as long as I get my money's worth.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Sony
A little conflicted here, are we?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-murdoch-sees-eventual-break-with-amazon-over-kindle-active-talks-with-s/
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/05/murdochs-ultimatum-to-amazon-give-us-the-names-or-else/
This is very disappointing...both because of the hyped-up /. summary and the overreaction of some of the media to his statements, made as a response to a question in a telephone news conference largely about News Corps.' financial side.
A former journalism teacher of mine prohibited the use of adjectives and to the word "I" outside quotation marks in news stories. Taking the /. summary as an example, we are left with nothing but a (relatively) reasonable quotation from someone (Murdoch) who has already spoken about this.
This summary is *wrong* on so many levels. It has severely overhyped the event and set up a straw man in that Murdoch speculated about asking Amazon for his subscribers' info but has not yet done so.
And where is /.'s moderation? How in the world did this ever get published on /.? Has /. become Digg?
You obviously never have seen a sony reader do you?
The thing can be loaded via usb just like a normal harddrive, you can use drmed ebooks but open epub books and
pdfs work quite fine and there is no way that sony can pull a book from you unless you confirm it first in the uploading pc software
to sync it away.
For all bad things sony has done in this area, they hit it right on the head with the ebook readers they simply
are a good mixture between being almost entirely open and still supporting drm unlike amazon who pulls stupid tricks
with the mobipocket format and their users.
I never got it why amazon got all the sales, the sony ebook reader is more open and has a way better build quality.
I guess amazon did the hype machine right, while Sonys always was somehow off radar.
In the US we have moved from having a 1960's type society that is local/national with very similar interests to a society that is very diverse.
What we think is newsworthy varies greatly. I read technical news information, Eve-Online news, and have completely lost interest in local and national news because it is so depressing.
Traditional news sources simply can not cover everything. So having a portal to bring the news an individual want to hear about into a central location is where things are going.
The journalistic sources that can accomplish this will be the victors of this change. I would love to sign into my news account and have detailed journalist analysis of the latest things going on in non Concord space, insights into the specific software packages I use, and what's new in the world of Maltese K9s.
Just repeating news releases and the same thing I can see on CSPAN, sans the spin, as well as bogus headlines such as "We caught Bin Laden" (AP/Reuters) is not going to cut it anymore.
My opinion.
Right, like he said, if it wasn't for the Simpsons.
A link to a version of Obama's speeches framed and edited by a known biased news network is a link to a version of Obama's speeches framed and edited by a known biased news network. It matters not where the video is hosted, because it's still Obama's words rearranged and surrounded with baseless insinuations and implied statements.
There, fixed that for you.
No, he clearly said "fucking Crystal".
Her name is spelled with a 'y', not an 'i', and you too can enjoy her favors on your yacht for a mere $100,000 in sparkly trinkets, coke, and/or cash delivered monthly.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'll let someone else make the "whoosh" noise... :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
WHOOOOOSH!
Why was it profitable to create news outlets in traditional media from advertising money and not on the internet?
The bane of internet advertising is direct feedback. With print media, businesses would run advertising and simply hope it is working. They would renew their ads every week. In the internet age you get instant feedback on how successful it is.. number of page views, number of clicks. Poor performing ads get pulled quickly, providing less revenue.
We are at a time of transition. Many younger people consume their news entirely from the internet. While it isn't the whole population, it is growing at a very high rate. All we have to do is wait. When enough people are using the internet for their news, and enough advertisers realize that it is page hits and not clicks that matter, there will be plenty of revenue to be had producing quality news... probably even more revenue than before since the distribution costs are so much lower.
At this point, I always direct people to NPR. 10% comes from the government, 35% from corporate sponsors, the rest from listeners. It doesn't get much more directly supported than this. If you don't like their programming, tell them you won't support them anymore. If there's more like you, watch them change the programming. Amazing how that has created some kick-ass reporting.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"'As I've said before, my concept of a business model has to treat customers like products to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their traditions of controlling everything people see and hear,' Murdoch said. 'Creating fictional news is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply making us look like greedy control freaks who want to rape the hearts and minds of Americans.'"
There, fixed that for you.
The economy is shit at the moment and I think people are coming around to realising that a lot of Murdoch's "news" outlets are complete bullshit and going elsewhere for their news.
If you sell 1000 e-copies through Amazon, and 0.1% of your readers write you back, you have to spend time reading and acting on 1 piece of mail.
If you sell 1M e-copies, you'll have 1000 pieces of mail to respond to.
The "incremental cost" per 1,000 copies is very small though compared to either print, or to a lesser degree, hosting it on your own web site and doing all the account-management and bandwidth in-house.
I've heard things like a typical American big-city for-profit newspaper's subscription fee barely covers the cost of of the paper, ink, and delivery, and sometimes not even that. The costs of creating the content are borne pretty much entirely by advertisements.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This may come as quite a shock, but Rupert Murdoch is far from a Republican. He's a businessman who saw an underrepresented market - cable TV news that slanted right rather than slanted left. Other than that, he's friends with plenty of liberal bigwigs and actively promoted Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"Murdoch said. 'Quality journalism is not cheap, but I am. Step 1. Profit! There IS no step 2 ..."
'As I've said before, the traditional business model has to change rapidly to ensure that our journalistic businesses can return to their old margins of profitability,' Murdoch said
Wait, let me get this straight, Murdoch can't run his business so he's asking other people to do it for him. It's called a consultant and they sure as hell ain't cheap. Seriously, if you claim to be a capitalist then make your business work or gtfo.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
Whenever I buy something I do not want to have my name address and other private information to be spread to the whole world. I want this to be only given to the store I buy from and only for the STRICT necessary purpose of the transaction. And I have got the privacy law of my country agreeeing with me. You may live in a country where all privacy is long gone, but that is your problem. *IF* a store gives my private info to anybody against my will and it was not forseen in the contract I signed with them, then they get my lawyer on their ass, and *I* will win. And if they put originally in their contract that they will provide my user info for anything beyond simple delivery (markleting, etc...) , then they don't get my sale to begin with. And in what I agreed upon with the online storeI use it is *NOT* written they will sell or give my info.
Secondly that a privacy invasive procedure is NOW available whereas it was not available before, does not mean it should be used. Visa/MC can also "sell" the lsit of all what you buy to marketer. And it would certainly be a very very precise info. That does not mean it is desirable on any ground.
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