There’s Gold in Them There Rivers!

Fer Shame. Mr Murdoch from Newscorp talking to, I think, his son-in-law’s press paper thingie, is giving up already on his mastheads. Pffft.
Rupert Murdoch has forecast a gloomy future for newspapers with the growth of the internet, saying he doesn’t know “anybody under the age of 30 who has ever looked at a classified ad”.The owner of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times and the News of the World, who once described newspaper classified advertising revenue as providing “rivers of gold”, now says: “Sometimes rivers dry up”.
The problem, I reckon, is the culture of the journalists and editors. When you are sabotaged at every step – and lets face it, a blind man could see what the papers should be implementing as an absolute minimum and aren’t – by your staff, and misled by your advisors, its hard to see the wood for the trees. Bottom line? Newscorp has as its foundation newspapers, and should fight tooth and nail to get back in the lead. C’mon lads, get it together! The classifieds race has not finished, in fact it not even started in Australia if crappy realestate.com.au and seek jobs are anything to go by. Where’s the integration between offline readership and online groups? I mean, you go to these portals and tell me if you see any web2.0 stuff there – ratings systems, online communities, collaborative content – there’s tonnes of scope in the classifieds market for change. Game on!

And the next generation will lead the way…. maybe?
James Packer drove the NineMSN portal deal – ok, today is a bit of a mess, but at the time it led the way for comprehensive portals. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with citizen journalism and user generated content from James Packer (post gambling ventures) and Lachlan Murdoch (post Newscorp) in the future. Or is there another potential player in the Australian collaborative journalism that I am unaware of? Hmmm no, it’s not Fairfax.