Sony’s Sir Howard Stringer makes fun of News Corp hacking scandal
On the same day that James Murdoch was fighting for his career at a parliamentary hearing on Thursday in London, Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer was making fun of the whole situation an ocean away.
At a fancy breakfast hosted by News Corp’s Wall Street Journal in New York (where Sirius XM’s CEO Mel Karmazin was in the house), Stringer was the guest of honor. WSJ editor Robert Thomson kicked off the Q&A session introducing Stringer, who later took the opportunity to show off one of Sony’s new products, a pair of binoculars that can be used to record video or pictures in 3D. That’s when Stringer seized the moment to turn the breakfast into an impromptu roast about News Corp’s woes. Wielding the binoculars, he said:
“These are 3D binoculars. I venture it got good reviews. The Wall Street Journal will equip all their reporters with this. And if you think hacking the Royal Family is fun with phones, this is the ideal device. If you stay at the Hotel InterContinental Hyde Park, you can actually gaze into Buckingham Palace with these. I am telling this to (Thomson), wherever you are. Did you leave already? This is for you. This is for you. Video recording or stills.”
When I caught Stringer on the sidelines after the event, he admitted his stand-up routine “was a bit dangerous.”
from Summit Notebook:
WSJ reporters get, dig change
We and the rest of the media world that covered News Corp and Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of Dow Jones & Co had no shortage of reporters at The Wall Street Journal telling us how bad life was going to get. Among the complaints was the paper's increasing focus on politics and non-business news. Wasn't this "diluting the brand" as they say in mediaspeak?
Not so, according to Robert Thomson, the former Times of London editor who now edits the Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. Business news now is concentrated in the B section of the paper (B for Business, yes, it works.), and Journal reporters are not only with the program, they're showing a willingness to try things differently.
"It's been fascinating. There was a presumption that people would be unwilling to change," Thomson told us at the Reuters Media Summit. "There has been an innate enthusiasm to develop the paper, particularly to develop the relationship between the paper, WSJ.com, Dow Jones Newswires and Marketwatch."
It's also a good attitude to take when nearly every other news outlet you might work for is cutting jobs.
(Photo: Reuters)
Ronald, all the points you make here are things that we have reported. It’s also fairly well known that I spent a very short, six-week part of my career working at Murdoch’s Journal, so you might find that my digging is more informed than most people’s.
Also, this is a blog, and sometimes it’s OK to throw things up there and let people like you comment. We also have a wire that is full of analysis and digging and where, if you do some digging, you will find that what you think we lack is actually out there.
My telephone number is 646-223-6012. If you are as informed as you sound, you must have good anonymous tips to give me. Help me help you.
Lower your newspaper expectations – now
Former Merrill Lynch newspaper publisher analyst Lauren Rich Fine said something cautiously optimistic about newspapers at the Dow Jones Media and Money conference on Wednesday: “Most of these companies can still be decent businesses. They just have to rethink their expectations. … Eventually, people will demand quality information, and they will pay for it.”
You can quibble with whether that’s optimistic if you like. To be fair, it’s a nice way of saying that newspapers will no longer be equipped with a license to mint their own coin, and that it’s Wall Street that has to get used to it. After all, as long as Wall Street doesn’t get used to it, you see stock moves like these today:
Gannett down 10 percent, McClatchy down 13 percent, New York Times down 8 percent (To be fair, Journal Register is up 50 percent this afternoon to an ultra-cheap 1.5 cents per share on news likely known only to itself)
Fine, who retired from Merrill and now teaches at Kent State University and was just hired to media blog PaidContent.org, made her comment on the same day that Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert — negative on the newspaper business for more than three years — dared to put a time on when U.S. newspaper publishers might see fortunes improve.
Here’s a line from his research note on Wednesday:
Newspaper companies are NOT going out of business (although highly leveraged companies will face particularly acute challenges). Ultimately, we believe newspapers will re-emerge as healthy and dominant players in the local media marketplace as their business models evolve into a hybrid print and online offering. Margins, however, will be significantly below the 20%+ levels historically achieved, and it will likely take another five years before online revenues are sufficiently large to offset secular declines in the print business. Accordingly, we continue to recommend an underweight position in the group.
Again — cautiously optimistic.
Brauchli’s unfinished News Corp business
Marcus Brauchli could have looked forward to a pleasant summer vacation before digging into his new job in September as The Washington Post’s new executive editor, but instead he will punch the clock like the rest of us.
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, the former Wall Street Journal managing editor said he plans to wrap up his consulting work with News Corp on a project in Asia. We don’t know the details, but it was part of an agreement tied to his resignation from the Journal after News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch let him know that his services at the paper would no longer be needed.
“It’s very interesting and productive,” was all Brauchli would say about it.
He reportedly took home a decent severance package for resigning only about a year after Dow Jones’s previous management named him as the Journal’s top editor. Some reports say it was $3 million to $5 million. Brauchli would not comment on the amount, nor would he say whether he’s keeping it now that he has a new job and won’t be enriching News Corp’s Asian business.
We also asked him about what he told Murdoch and new Journal editor Robert Thomson about his prospects at the Post. “Of course, I kept News Corp informed,” he said. He did not say if Murdoch or Thomson had any words of advice for him.
(Photo courtesy of The Washington Post)
