We think this point by Matthew Creamer deserves a highlight:
“A News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal begs a question: In a world where the attention of consumers and hence advertisers is divided among video games, “American Idol” and LOLCats, can a business built solely to deliver news — especially long, serious articles about complicated topics — remain independent and successful? … The nation’s leading purveyor of business information, still an agenda-setter for the planet’s biggest economy, becomes a cog in a vertically integrated, multinational creator and distributor of entertainment, a machine engineered to pump out synergies such as “The Simpsons” movie or, more scarily, that aborted O.J. Simpson extravaganza, rather than Pulitzers… Sure, Mr. Murdoch will pump capital into the paper, allowing it to build out its international operation, but some are predicting that one effect of that bulking up could be to further his business goals, especially in China. And Journal reportage, now a means to the purist end of watchdogging the business community, will be called upon also to add more grist to that massive multimedia content mill, in the form of the Fox Business Network — which is already being positioned as more pro-business than CNBC, absurd as that sounds.”
from: “Stand-Alone News Brands Are Doomed.” Matthew Creamer. Advertising Age. Aug 6, 2007 [sub may be required]
