When Rupert Murdoch said the other day that he wasn’t investing in newspapers anymore, we assumed that he was being ironic, especially as it came in the same telephone conference call with News Corp analysts and reporters in which he said that he thought his agreement to buy Newsday from Tribune Co was all but sewn up .

That goes to show you what they say about assuming things.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday , and we subsequently confirmed , that News Corp isn’t going to chase Newsday after all. Instead, it’s pulling its $580 million bid, paving the way for Cablevision to likely take over its fellow Long Island media outlet. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman is in the race still as far as we know, but it’s hard to see how Tribune will take his $580 million bid when Cablevision has a $70 million sweetener on top of that.

Why? Apparently the economics were unjustifiable. What could that mean? The short list: Tribune’s quarterly financial results, which came out late Friday, show the company continuing to lose advertising revenue at its newspapers; media ownership laws might make it tough for Murdoch to take the paper yet keep his New York-area television broadcast licenses; and finally, a bid higher than $650 million is already a higher valuation for a newspaper than most sensible financial folks see as feasible.

That didn’t seem to bother Murdoch before. Here’s what he said on the News Corp earnings call (reproduced from our earlier blog entry ):

No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail. Just be patient for a couple of days (inaudible). We’re certainly not in the business of getting into an auction here …

We’re hoping to wrap it up within the next week. And I don’t mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days … It takes two to agree. But we’re at a pretty advanced stage. I’ll just leave it at that at the moment.

Here’s what he subsequently said at the Time 100 dinner later that week, according to the New York Observer (whose owner Jared Kushner also was interested in bidding, though a source close to Kushner Properties told us recently that he has no idea what he wants to do about a bid right now — we’re guessing nothing):

“Yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty,” he told The Observer. “I was telling the truth, but you don’t know until …”

Until Saturday.

For a mogul who’s spent a lifetime snatching up newspapers across the globe — and who spent the better part of his time talking about them on Wednesday’s quarterly earnings conference call — we found it surprising that he insists he’s not spending more money on the dying print business.

Murdoch: “From day one, the financial press has been fixated on portraying this move as a change in strategic direction; the company is now focused on allocating more of its capital on print businesses. That is not our intent, nor is it factually correct. We have not changed our playbook.”

Murdoch argued that Dow Jones, the splashiest of his newspaper buys yet, is barely a newspaper publisher at all. To lay out that argument, Murdoch appears to have abandoned his earlier argument that a free Wall Street Journal online would be better than a subscription-based site.

WSJ.com still has more than 1 million paying subscribers, up 11 percent compared to last year. (It’s unclear if he meant that the site added 11 percent more subscribers compared to the same period last year.)

Then there’s the paper itself, where Murdoch sees big opportunities to boost ad sales and circulation volume and revenue. Individually paid subscriptions rose 1.6 percent to 1.46 million and overall circulation rose 0.3 percent to 2.07 million. Circulation revenue rose 6.8 percent in the quarter, slightly below the 7.3 percent growth in 2007.

Its biggest growth area remains its enterprise division, which houses the Dow Jones Index, Factiva and Newswires — all of them subscription businesses. He says the Dow Jones Indices business revenue rose 37%, with profits up nearly 50% in the quarter ended March 31st. Factiva revenue grew 10 percent.

Dow Jones’s financial information and services group revenue rose 13% , with profits up over 8%.

All this in the first quarter after the purchase! Then again, maybe Murdoch thinks some people have set the bar higher than that.

This is destined to be an extra-inning game; to use an overly used metaphor, we’re only in the first innings. Those of you expecting to see immediate dramatic results in 12 weeks are kidding yourselves and setting an unrealistic bar. Over time, as we have done dozens of times at News Corp, most recently with SKY Italia and MySpace, we’ve made our acquisitions work, generating great returns to our shareholders. We’ll do it again at Dow Jones. It may take time, but I am as confident of it as any acquisition I have done.

Then there’s his Newsday bid, which was one of the more exciting parts of the conference call. Boxed in by Newsday reporters on the call, Murdoch spoke frankly about his confidence in landing the Long Island daily.

No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail. Just be patient for a couple of days (inaudible). We’re certainly not in the business of getting into an auction here …

We’re hoping to wrap it up within the next week. And I don’t mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days … It takes two to agree. But we’re at a pretty advanced stage. I’ll just leave it at that at the moment.

Nope. No newspapers here.

(Photo: Reuters/David Moir / News Corp. Chairman and CEO Murdoch stands with Scotland’s First Minister Salmond during the official opening of the News International press printing plant at Eurocentral near Glasgow in central Scotland.)

Latest change at The Wall Street Journal in Year One of the Murdoch Era: Venerable editorial page cartoon “Pepper… and Salt” is moving to the leisure and arts page.

We’re almost surprised that a Frankenstein-style mob hasn’t already taken pitchforks and torches to the Dow Jones building. After all, it’s one of the paper’s longer-running traditions. Heck, even the editor-in-charge of the cartoon has been at it for 58 years, The New York Times reports.

The Journal would not comment on why the 58-year-old cartoon was moved last week, or what the future holds for “Pepper … and Salt” in the new Murdoch era.

But Pepper’s move could make way for a more Murdochian brand of editorial cartoon, cartoonists said. (The Times reported.)

It turns out that the editors announced the change on April 22. Why didn’t we notice before? Because we take our Pepper… and Salt on the Internet.

(Photo: Reuters file)

Rupert Murdoch has earned the disdain of many Wall Street Journal staffers by saying their stories often are too long , especially some of the front-page juggernauts that take their time getting started.

While the page-one woes got all the attention, it looks like he and his crew were doing some editing elsewhere in the paper as well. The Heard on the Street column, which contains all sorts of interesting analysis and tips about buzz in the financial world, seems to be nearly half its former size some days.

Friday’s feature, “Lehman Brothers Seen As Cheap Recovery Bet ” by Peter Eavis and David Reilly, measured 431 words. Compare that to the (now weirdly prescient) “A Microsoft, Yahoo Tie-Up? ” that Robert Guth and Kevin Delaney wrote for the May 3, 2006, edition, at 1,224 words.

Typically, 800 to 1,200 words has been the breathing room for such stories, and maybe that will return on days when the news demands. Then again…

(Photo: Reuters)

Many Wall Street Journal watchers bemoan new owner Rupert Murdoch’s greater emphasis on political and general news coverage in the paper, but so far their evidence has been anecdotal.

Not anymore! The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) furnished numbers that give an exact percentage on the decrease in business news that gets on the front page of the nation’s most powerful business daily. Here’s an excerpt from the report:

Under the Murdoch regime, the single biggest change in front-page coverage occurred with politics and the presidential campaign. From Dec. 13, 2007 through March 13, 2008, coverage more than tripled, jumping to 18% of the newshole compared with 5% in the four months before the ownership change.

Since the front page has a finite amount of space, that increase in political coverage seems to have come largely at the expense of business news. In the Murdoch era, coverage of corporate America has plunged by more than half-to 14% of the front-page space from 30% in the months before the sale.

How low can he go before the Journal’s high net-worth readership bolts?

–Reporting by Robert MacMillan and Kenneth Li

(Photo: Graphic courtesy of PEJ)

Although Marcus Brauchli’s decision to resign as the top editor at The Wall Street Journal — announced on Tuesday — did not require the approval of the paper’s editorial integrity committee, they will step in when it’s time to hire the next one. 

The committee was designed to safeguard editorial independence by approving or vetoing the hiring choices in case its new owner, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, attempts to use his candidate to evade a solemn promise to keep the newspaper’s editorial dignity intact. It was one of the few safeguards left behind by its previous owners, the Bancroft family, as a condition for agreeing to the Murdoch’s takeover.

How effective will the committee actually be? We asked former Dow Jones board member Christopher Bancroft on Tuesday.

“That’s a lovely fantasy,” he said. “I told the family [at the time] that it’s window dressing. It is a lovely fantasy to imagine you can have a board that will take care of editorial issues at The Wall Street Journal.”

Jeff Bercovici and Portfolio.com got a similar comment from another family member, Jane Cox MacElree:

“I’m not surprised,” says Jane Cox MacElree, who controlled 15 percent of the family’s Dow Jones shares. “This is why I was not in favor of selling the paper to that man. Words mean nothing to him, unless they’re his.”

What do you think about the committee? Five people getting $100,000 to act out a fantasy, or five guardians of truth, justice and journalism?

(Photo: Reuters)

We weren’t expecting huge surprises during Yahoo’s earnings conference call, but CEO Jerry Yang was spectacularly vague about the Internet company’s plans vis-a-vis Microsoft or any other potential tie-ups — with Google, Time Warner’s AOL or News Corp — that Yahoo has been working on.

At the very start of the call, Yang essentially said “Don’t go there” to analysts and investors, reminding them about the purpose of the call.

“I’d like to remind you that today’s call is about our Q1 results, so please direct your questions to the quarter if possible,” Yang said.

When he touched on Microsoft — referring to it as three months of “uncertainty” — it was to reiterate the same line: “Our board and management are committed to choosing a path to maximize shareholder value.”

At the same time, Yang was bent on convincing analysts and investors that, despite an unchanged revenue forecast for the year, Yahoo deserves a higher price than the $43 billion cash-and-stock deal that Microsoft has offered. Is that because Yahoo piggybacked on gains from a stake in China’s Alibaba.com to a higher quarterly profit? Or because Yang said Yahoo’s “strategies and investments are beginning to pay off”?

Not that analysts or investors were convinced. Most continue to believe that Yahoo’s earnings are unlikely to put pressure on Microsoft on raise its bid.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, meanwhile, said before the earnings, “I wish Yahoo all the success with its results, but it doesn’t affect the value of Yahoo to Microsoft.”

So where does that leave Yahoo now? Wednesday might offer some clues, when Yahoo’s two-week test on outsourcing search advertising to Google ends. Or it may not. Yahoo chairman Sue Decker already swatted hopes on the call, saying it’s “premature” to speculate on what sort of deal the two might strike.

Photo: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang (Reuters)

News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch dominated headlines again on Tuesday as not one, but at least three news items rippled across the media world.

As shareholders of rival paper The New York Times assemble on Tuesday morning for its annual meeting held at the company’s glittering new headquarters near Times Square, Murdoch took steps to accelerate the remaking of the Wall Street Journal in his image. WSJ is set to announce today the resignation of its managing editor Marcus Brauchli, who is leaving 11 months into the job and just a few months following the closing of Murdoch’s $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones. Murdoch appointee and publisher Robert Thomson will take over the top editorial spot in the interim, according to news reports. 

Meanwhile, News Corp deal makers across town appear poised to reach a deal to relieve real estate magnate and Tribune Chief Sam Zell of his Newsday newspaper for about $580 million to create a joint venture to combine Murdoch’s New York Post and other assets with Tribune’s paper. The Newsday deal is expected to cut about $50 million in annual losses at the Post. 

Then, quietly, Murdoch left the door open to a possible joint bid with Microsoft to buy Yahoo during a question and answer session at an event in which he was honored. Brauchli, the New York Times reported, attended the same event in Washington DC.

(Time.com) (WSJ) (NYT) (Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman may be conspiring to eliminate CBS Chief Les Moonves. (New York Post )
• Bambi’s getting company. Disney launches a new nature film label, Disneynature. (Reuters)
• MySpace snubs Fox for NBC News in new political site. (Hollywood Reporter)

(Photo: Reuters)

UPDATE - Bloomberg told a press conference on Monday that he is not entering the newspaper business, saying:

“I am not a newspaper person.“

Could New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg someday become New York Times Publisher Michael Bloomberg? (pictured on left, with Pope Benedict)

While it’s not a new idea, most media outlets — present company included — are all abuzz over the idea, and it has been reported that aides are whispering to Bloomberg he should merge Bloomberg LP, the financial news organization he created, with the Times.

The new smolderings come as the paper’s parent company feels pressure from dissident shareholders to spark advertising sales and dump assets to bolster its share price.

The press excitement is partly fed by the wrestlemania-ish notion of a Bloomberg-run media empire tackling Rupert Murdoch’s media kingdom. Murdoch himself has made no secret about giving the Times a run for its audience with the beefed up political news now appearing in his Wall Street Journal.

The idea of Bloomberg-as-rescuer has been bandied about before, the Washington Post points out, by the likes of Jim Cramer, Michael Wolff, and others.

But with the clock ticking on Bloomberg’s political career — his mayoral stint ends next year, although he could still seek higher office — the New York Daily News notes that it remains unclear where he will “devote his managerial prowess and $11.5 billion fortune.”

For the record, the Times tells us the company’s controlling Ochs-Sulzberger clan still believes in its current capital structure as the best way to keep the paper independent and full of editorial integrity.

(New York Post)

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• USA Today publisher Gannett posted a drop in quarterly profit because of falling print advertising sales. (Reuters)
• Sumner Redstone’s Viacom will launch a premium TV and movie channel with Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, aiming a direct volley at Time Warner’s HBO as well as Redstone’s own Showtime networks owned by CBS. (Reuters)
• Deepak Nayar, behind such films as “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Bend it Like Beckham,” and Sandy Grushow, the former chairman of Fox Television Entertainment, are launching Filmaka (http://www.filmaka.com), a new kind of studio that uses the Web to cultivate the next great talents. (Reuters)
• MySpace promotes Jeff Berman to the new post of president of sales and marketing. His role as Fox Interactive Media’s social net’s ad sales came as part of a reorganization that decentralizes advertising. (PaidContent)

(Photo: Reuters)

News Corp jewel Fox Interactive Media (a.k.a the catchy “FIM”) made a late-night admission that its revenue might fall short of a $1 billion target for the current fiscal year.

The division that houses teen hangout MySpace is also revamping its advertising sales division to embrace a new technology that mines user profiles on the social network site to serve visitors more individually-tailored ads.

“We expect to be close to our target,” FIM said of its revenue for fiscal 2008. One company source said the timing of the new ad technology could be partly to blame for any shortfall.

This is not the first sign of trouble at the unit considered News Corp’s boldest play in the digital arena. As early as October, Rupert Murdoch downplayed expectations for MySpace revenue for fiscal 2008, while ad sales partner Google admitted in January that making money off of social networks (read: MySpace) was proving more difficult than even Larry Page and Sergey Brin could have anticipated.

Is that what made Yahoo so attractive?

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:
* Microsoft and Yahoo senior executives met this week to discuss Microsoft’s proposal to acquire the Internet company but failed to resolve any of their differences. (WSJ)

* The dispute over the $20 billion leveraged buyout of U.S. radio operator Clear Channel will go to trial in New York as early as May 5. (Reuters)

* Mexico’s media giant Televisa starts production of its first Chinese language soap opera, as it looks to the Asian market for new business. (Reuters)

* HarperCollins is forming a new publishing group that will substitute profit-sharing with authors for cash advances and try to eliminate the costly practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold copies. (NYTimes)

(Photo of MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, via Reuters)