Is Rupert Losing His Magic Touch?

[proud2BlibKansan]

Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch bestrode the media world like a colossus. News Corp.’s stock simmered above $25 a share as properties from MySpace to American Idol to Fox Sports stood tall. A business news channel was in the works, and Murdoch was gunning for Dow Jones as the jewel in his media crown. Today, if you listen closely, you can hear the air leaking out.

It’s not just the Great Recession (to use the name currently in vogue). Ever since the purchase of Dow Jones, signs of fatigue and weakness have been appearing in nearly every area of Murdoch’s empire. News Corp.’s share price has fallen 77 percent from its 2007 high to $6 Friday, compared to a 56 percent fall in the S&P 500.

That’s not to say Dow Jones was a bad move. (Although it was a mightily overpriced one; News Corp.’s $14 billion market cap is only two and a half times the $5.6 billion it paid for Dow Jones.) Dow Jones has given News Corp. a strong foothold in online news. Its sites’ traffic grew 76 percent last year, and while the Wall Street Journal’s page views are significantly smaller than the New York Times’, its growth is twice as fast.

So why did operating income at News Corp.’s newspaper division fall 9 percent last quarter? Because other newspapers it owns aren’t being as spry as the Journal and its sister sites about driving traffic. Many are clinging desperately to print formats. As has been said over and over, it’s not the news(paper) business that’s dying, it’s the print platform.

more . . . http://www.salon.com/tech/giga_om/tech_insider/2009/03/07/is_rupert_losing_his_magic_touch/index.html