Mayne Bites Murdoch

Stephen Mayne, the young journalist who started the highly successful political website crikey.com.au (mortgaging his house at times to pay bills ) and then sold it for a cool million dollars has been tackling Rupert Murdoch at the annual News Corp AGM in New York.

Mayne offered Rupert a few books to read on his up coming trip to Australia  (and thus avoiding American comedian Jon Stewart's Washington Rally To Restore Sanity on Oct 30th who Rupes says he has never heard of).

Man Bites Murdoch by sacked Melbourne News Corp editor Bruce Guthrie and Bruce Dover's (News Corp former senior Hong Kong executive) Murdoch's Adventure In China that describes how News Corp lost billions of dollars in China. Murdoch says it's all fantasy but when Mayne requested any News Corp executive present to raise their hand if they had read the books, apparently none had.

Mayne also asked if Murdoch may consider retiring when he turns 80 next year but Rupert was having none of it : "only when my health gives out". ( his mum Dame Elisabeth Murdoch  is 101).

Tackling Rupert on the great hacking scandal the great man replied  : "There was an an incident more than 5 years ago. The person who bought a bugged phone conversation was immediately fired and in fact he subsequently went to jail". 

And to Mayne's helpful suggestion that he may read the New York Time's claim that there was a "collective amnesia " in News Corp about the whole affair he replied :"I'm sorry. Journalists who have been fired, who are unhappy, or work for other organisations - I don't take them as an authority, and least of all I don't take The New York Times as authority.

Mayne also got a comment on son-in-law Mathew Freud's ( "Britain's most powerful PR business chief") recent condemnation of  Fox News.
"He could not have been more wrong." says Rupert.

Finally Mayne congratulated Rupert for firing News Corp political hack Glen Milne (known in the trade as "the poisoned dwarf") who famously attacked Mayne and pushed him off the stage at the Walkely Awards in 2006.
"I didn't know anything about it " says Rupes.

It sounds like Murdoch is in top form again and has recovered from his recent British Parliamentary Committee appearance when at times  he looked rather confused  and had trouble hearing the questions that left many wondering whether an ear trumpet should have been provided for the media mogul.

 # There is no truth to the claim by one wag that Wendi Murdoch was waiting just behind a curtain ready to spring to action to defend her man but we're reliably informed that all attendees at the meeting were frisked for cream pies before being allowed to enter the auditorium.

You can read Mayne's full account here and below we bring you the fabulous Glen Milne attack on Stephen at The Walkelys when Glen -apparently having digested to much flu medication-went on the rampage.

Sign Of The Times?

For 25 years Jonathan Chancellor has been the nation's expert on movements in the property business. Whether it was a soap star selling or buying an apartment or a high flyer trading up in the mansion market, Chancellor has his finger on the pulse.

Now the Shuttle hears that he is moving from Fairfax Newspapers to the top political website crikey.com.au having been snapped up by former Fairfax managing editor Eric Beecher who now owns crikey.

Chancellor's extensive list of contacts within the property market rivals none and he has been the author of numerous scoops on who is going where in the homes market. Often it's an indicator of how the economy is travelling.

In a country obsessed by property prices, reading what the rich and powerful pay for where they live is eagerly perused by those in the suburbs. Jonathan is widely published in various Fairfax newspapers that include the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Canberra Times, Australian Financial Review and the West Australian.

Is it a wise move ?. Fairfax were one of the first of the Australian newspaper networks to move into the Internet world pre-2000 and at the time they were much criticised but it stood them well for the future with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd playing catch-up ever since. Murdoch has admitted as much.

Legend has it that when he was CEO at News Ltd, Lachlan Murdoch sent a memo around to staff saying not to spend too much time accessing the net as it was a 'passing fad'.

Fairfax's huge yearly profits- the 'Rivers Of Gold' as the late media mogul Kerry Packer coined them, come from it's classified advertising in which it has dominated the Australian market for decades.

The current CEO of Fairfax Greg Hywood was on the ABC's Media Watch last week and scoffed at the idea that printed newspapers were a dying industry as the British media writer Roy Greenslade proclaimed them to be in this article :More US newspapers dying by the day.
Greenslade writes for The Guardian in the UK which along with the Daily Mail have been the two British newspapers to reap a windfall with their internet websites.

Jonathan Holmes

Responding to presenter Jonathan Holmes question on whether  "the newspaper model-is it a dead duck?, Hywood said  "of course it’s not. I mean some newspapers may go but many will survive".
Despite his comments staff levels at Fairfax have been cut by 50% over the past ten years.

Crikey was started by former Victorian premier Jeff Kennet staffer Stephen Mayne in 2001 and despite having to mortgage his home once to pay legal fees, Mayne sold the site in 2005 for $1M.

It's sign of the times that Chancellor would move from the relative security of Fairfax to the much smaller publishing world of crikey.
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Read Jonathon Holmes full interview with Greg Hywood at Media Watch ABC TV.
Stephen Mayne now publishes the internet shareholder's activist website The Mayne Report.
Perhaps perfectly illustratimg the tensions within the publishing world of today : watch the legendary attack upon Mayne at the newspaper gongs- The Walkley Awards as political writer Glenn Milne-revved up on flu medication scuffles with Mayne :