Rupert's Roller-Coaster

It's hard keeping up with Rupert Murdoch's fortunes on the Internet.

First, he blew it: he ignored the Net, declaring it of no interest. Then he hit the jackpot, buying MySpace for what seemed an incredibly low price: just $580 million, when Facebook was being valued at billions. That's looking expensive today:

News Corp specifically blames MySpace for a loss of $363 million to the company’s bottom line

And now, it looks like Rupert has really lost it:

"Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch. "The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

Good luck with that, Rupe.

I think it's interesting that I almost never quote from or link to News International titles: there's simply too little there of interest. By contrast, I *do* link quite often to New York Times and Guardian stories, both of which offer stuff not covered elsewhere. So I don't think I'm going to miss Mr Murdoch's titles when they suddenly fall off the digital radar...