Murdoch tries to continue his media monopoly

Much has been made over the past two days about Rupert Murdoch's unsolicited attempt to take over Dow Jones & Co., which, among other things, owns The Wall Street Journal.

And of course it should be heavily discussed, because a potential $5 billion hostile takeover is obviously going to make waves in the industry. But it appears that the Bancrofts, the family that has a controlling interest in Dow Jones, plan to use their 52% of stock voting power to thwart any potential deal.

Murdoch, the Aussie-born chairman and CEO Of News Corp., is of course no stranger to media. He built The Australian and The Weekly Standard newspapers from the ground up, and of course the cable network Fox News . While the content of the latter may be controversial, it's undoubtedly lucrative - and proof positive that Murdoch knows what the public wants.

Twenty-six years ago, Murdoch also took over The Times of London and Sunday Times in the U.K., as well as the less-prestigious tabloid The Sun. In the U.S., Murdoch has been running The New York Post at a loss for many years. While the latter may not be a financial success, it is an indicator of Murdoch's devotion to the print medium. Murdoch is not in the business of slicing and dicing newspapers, or simply shutting them down. He does everything within reason to nurture print operations and make them grow.

David Kirkpatrick of Fortune Magazine sees a Murdoch takeover as a good move for Dow Jones, because despite the fact that Murdoch is a 76-year-old geezer, he seems to be the only mogul who really understands the huge impact the Internet is going to have in all media over the next decade.

Murdoch got MySpace for a steal at $580 million back in 2005, which was peanuts compared to the $1.65 billion Google shelled out for YouTube. He is now expanding MySpace into China, because Murdoch understands the global significance of social networking and its advertising possibilities.

And Fox Business Channel is supposed to launch later this year, so having The Wall Street Journal, the premier financial newspaper, within Murdoch's arsenal would surely strengthen the brand. Murdoch told The New York Times that if he is successful in winning over the Bancrofts, he would like to rename the channel with "Journal" incorporated somewhere within it.

But besides his business acumen, Murdoch is also known for his hands-on, in-the-trenches rapport with his editorial staffs - often doing his own layouts and photo croppings - in contrast to the laissez-faire approach by many other paper owners of his stature.

With the exception of Harold Evans, most of Murdoch's current and former editorial staffs praise his style, and most say that he doesn't force his famously conservative political leanings on his workers. Staffs on The Times of London and Sunday Times were allowed to endorse different candidates in the U.K.'s last general election, though it was widely known that Murdoch himself supported Labour Party leader Tony Blair.

Evans, on the other hand, claims Murdoch did force his politics on the paper, and diluted the Times' standards for the sake of commercialism. Evans is a former Times managing editor who was forced out of the job after clashing repeatedly with Murdoch, and claimed that he was encouraged to show support for then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

He hated the experience so much that he wrote a book about it, "Good Times, Bad Times." Some see Evans' book as nothing more than the airing of sour grapes. Obviously there are going to be adversarial relationships and disagreements in a big city newsroom.

And there are few people - if any - who have been in more big city newsrooms for longer periods of time than Rupert Murdoch. Sure, many people see Murdoch as an arch conservative.

But The Wall Street Journal is already seen as a very conservative publication, so even if Murdoch did try to exert his political influence, it probably wouldn't change the content all that much.

And again, Murdoch has proven that he understands the Web better than most moguls, so I say let's give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he can do with Dow Jones.

Who is "Ismail Ax?"

The American blogosphere logged a tragic milestone on Monday with the Virginia Tech massacre that claimed 33 lives.

Eighty or so hours after this incident, there have already been thousands of blogs written about this national tragedy (as of this posting, 8,687 blogs have been written under the heading of Virginia Tech, according to Technorati.com).

One of the more intriguing threads was the speculation of the meaning behind the name "Ismail Ax," which was found scrawled in red ink on the arm of Seung-Hui Cho. The name was also the alias Cho used on the postage when he sent his manifesto and video to NBC.

Some thought it might be a reference to the Islamic account of the Biblical sacrifice of Abraham. It seems that the Islamic connection was a popular theory in the blogosphere because many people believed the incident to be related to terrorism.

But in Cho's 1800-word manifesto and video, he ranted incoherently against wealth and debauchery, never citing any scripture, simply referencing Jesus Christ and martyrdom. He was organized, but seemed to lack the discipline and focus of a jihadist. Cho's motivations appear to be intensely narcissistic, and self-absorption goes against everything Islam is about. So it seems highly dubious that Cho did this in conjunction with any terrorist network.

Another, more obscure theory is that the name is a reference to the outlaw warrior character Ishmael Bush from the James Fenimore Cooper novel "The Prairie." The character is supposed to symbolize the darkest evil in man. Or some think it might possibly be the character Ishmael from "Moby Dick," since Cho was an English major and had likely read the book.

Others think that Cho used the name simply because it was the nickname he had adopted on a video-gaming site.

In a cynical sign of our tech-savvy times, Raymond Patterson of Corpus Christi, Texas registered the domain name ismailax.com five minutes after he heard it mentioned on a Fox News broadcast. Patterson says he has about 200 domain names registered overall. How somebody could be thinking about business while hearing details of a massacre is beyond me.

But Patterson said he had no intention of making "blood money" off the site. Fortunately, he appears to have lived up to that promise, and the domain has since been used to direct people to a memorial site for the Virginia Tech victims.

Regardless of the name's meaning - if there really is any - there's no way we'll ever truly know what compelled Cho to do what he did. But as journalists - and humans - we will always be striving to answer the unanswerable.

The Dynamics of Digital Dating

With Web 2.0 taking an increasingly large role in the lives of Americans, the idea of online dating, a minuscule niche just a few years ago, is rapidly attaining more respectability in the mainstream.

Couples are no longer ashamed to admit that they met online (not that they should have been in the first place - where else could you find such a precise match?). Those eHarmony and Match.com ads are now ubiquitous.

But even the dynamics of a meatspace rendezvous are being drastically altered by the Internet. You can Google your date's name and essentially find out all about him or her before ever engaging in a prolonged conversation.

This puts you in the awkward situation of already knowing your date's interests and what they are going to talk about, but not being able to say anything without looking like a stalker.

Of course, you shouldn't praise or condemn your date based upon a simple Google search, for obvious reasons. One being mistaken identity (having the name Josh Smith, this has happened to me more times than I care to remember.) Another reason being that people often lie or embellish on the Internet - about themselves and about each other. Everyone has an agenda.

Due to the preponderance of digital deception, the cottage industry of online background checks was born. Dating sites like True.com run criminal background checks on their subscribers. True.com plans to sue a Florida subscriber who was revealed to be an ex-con via a background check.

True.com has lobbied hard to get state legislatures to require online dating sites to have prominent postings that tell users whether they conduct criminal background checks on their subscribers. It's an idea that state lawmakers in California, Florida, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia have been flirting with for the past couple of years, but none has passed any legislation yet.

Of course, True.com is likely serving a corporate interest more than it's trying to curb crime. The site, which charges $50 a month and is notoriously hard to drop, used to this ploy to make a name for itself and stand out from the other services.

In another note of hypocrisy, the supposedly family-oriented service uses scantily-clad models in provocative poses (akin to those found on porn sites) to lure potential clients. And it also sends out fake, automated "winks" (which are user-to-user IMs meant to express an interest in each other). So if clients aren't really paying attention, they'll erroneously think that the site is paying off and they're getting their money's worth.

It's kind of ironic that a site selling itself on the premise of protecting users from deception is in fact methodically deceiving its own users. And it's even more ironic that the site is named True.com.

But the beauty of the Internet is that you can research all these companies beforehand, filtering out the frauds before you hand over your hard-earned cash in search of a romantic connection.

Whether dating in meatspace or cyberspace, risks will have to be taken and likely much money spent. But in both realms it's always a worthwhile proposition.

Confessions of a Porn Addict

According to a figure cited in an article on CNN.com, at any given moment there are about 28,258 Internet users looking at porn. Being a guy, this number didn't surprise me at all - if anything it seems kind of low.

What did surprise me were the results of an unscientific poll, conducted by the surreally-named XXXChurch.com, which found that 70 percent of Christians admitted to having an ongoing porn problem. "Problem" was defined as an addiction having reached the point where it had a negative effect on their personal lives, ruining relationships with their significant others and family members.

The founder of XXXChurch.com, Craig Gross, said 76 percent of the pastors he interviewed also confessed to having a porn problem. Gross says he isn't surprised by these figures, since pornography has become mainstreamed to the point where it is a $12 billion-a-year industry with 4.2 million porn sites to surf.



Gross founded the online ministry XXXChurch.com to start a dialogue about what he saw as the growing issue of porn use within the church. Along with his site, he also hosts periodic breakfast meetings that he has dubbed "Porn & Pancakes."

In addition to attending porn conventions and handing out bibles to the attendees, Gross travels to college campuses across the country and engages in debates with porn legend Ron Jeremy on pornography's effects on its users.

But Gross' methods are mild in comparison with that of Pure Life Christian Ministries, which offers a six-month, live-in treatment program for males with sexual addictions. This entire six-month period is devoted to labor and intensive bible study. All contact with the outside world is cut off - TV, cell phones and especially the Internet.

Their approach is like that of a substance abuse rehab clinic, and they treat their clients' addictions with the same seriousness as alcoholism.

Personally, I don't see porn in itself as a bad thing (as long as it's the legal variety). Like alcohol, it can be a good outlet - when used in moderation. It's when the activity becomes your life as opposed to a fleeting escape from it, that it becomes a problem.

Unfortunately, the Internet allows these activities to be conducted effortlessly and hassle-free - you don't have to spend a dime, and you get to forgo those sheepish walks to the cashier where you request a discreet brown paper bag.

If these time-honored rituals were still in place, porn usage would be a fraction of what it is today. I think it's mostly a matter of will power. But these problems do exist, and though I'm not particularly religious, I admire the efforts of men like Gross to address them.

If there are people for whom porn has become an all-consuming obsession, than I am all for whatever methods they deem necessary to get them back on the straight-and-narrow, and onto a happy and productive existence.

"ParkRidge47" not so grassroots after all

There has been much hype over the last few weeks surrounding the now-infamous attack ad against Hillary Clinton posted on YouTube by "ParkRidge47," the name being a sly reference to the Chicago suburb where Clinton grew up and the year of her birth, 1947.




The ad was a repurposing of Apple's famous 1984 ad that used George Orwell's "1984" images of Big Brother as a slam against IBM. Only now, Hillary is Big Brother. The post became the latest YouTube sensation, getting over 1.5 million views.

Despite the fact that the ad ends with a plug for Barack Obama's Web site, Obama's camp denied any involvement, as did all the other campaigns.

Thus, it was initially hailed as a milestone in grassroots campaigning, an ardent concerned voter taking their voice to the Internet in a novel and unprecedented way.

Naturally, newspapers in both print and online proceeded to wildly speculate as to who "ParkRidge47" really was. Some thought that it might be the same hard-right wingers who concocted the Swiftboat ads in 2004, in an attempt to take down both Clinton and Obama, who had vowed to run a clean campaign.

Some thought it might have been liberal blogger Arianna Huffington or one of her cohorts at The Huffington Post. In response, Huffington sought to clear her name by assembling a team of 30 or so techies to track down the true publisher.

Alas, it turned out to be a campaign professional after all - Philip de Vellis, who worked for Blue State Digital, a firm that's been retained by the Obama campaign. But it appears that de Vellis did this entirely on his own in his spare time, without the knowledge of Blue State or the Obama camp.

Nonetheless, de Vellis was immediately fired by Blue State Digital when the company became aware of his actions. And this wasn't the first time de Vellis was suspected of making an unauthorized video. The same thing happened last year with Sherrod Brown's (successful)Senate campaign, but de Vellis denied any involvement.

That Senate campaign was low-key enough that they gave up on the investigation, but a presidential campaign is relentless and no-holds-barred.

Regardless of whether de Vellis' actions were rogue or authorized, it has undoubtedly tainted Obama's campaign - probably the first of many more hits the campaign will take in the coming months.

It should also serve as a warning to anyone posting controversial content on the Internet who has delusions of anonymity.

This guy was a seasoned veteran of political campaigns and a professional technophile, who obviously knows how to cover his tracks far better than the average citizen. But he still got tracked down eventually, proving nothing is untraceable if the investigating party wants to get at you bad enough.

YouTube's Woes Worsen

At this point, we've pretty much all heard about the $1 billion lawsuit Viacom has launched against YouTube over alleged copyright infringements. But that is just one component of an assault from several media fronts.

In addition to that, two movie studios, Twentieth Century Fox, and more recently, Magnolia Pictures, have subpoenaed YouTube's parent company Google to identify users who posted pirated content from their studios. Fox went after YouTube back in January for illegal uploads of "24" and "The Simpsons."

NBC Universal also sent a six-page letter to YouTube expressing its disgruntlement over bootleg videos being uploaded to the site. NBC Universal played a large part in making YouTube so popular, with the now-famous "Lazy Sunday," and even more legendary "Dick in a Box," which has now been viewed over 18,000, 000 times.

YouTube's current policy towards piracy is that they will take unauthorized material down - if and when they are notified, and once they are able to locate all of said material.

Most media companies think that this policy is crap - and they're right. They shouldn't have to go through the process of legally notifying YouTube every time one of YouTube's users acts irresponsibly. What happened to the idea of "responsible host?" If someone behaves poorly in your house, you should be the one to deal with them. Other companies shouldn't have to log onto YouTube and waste countless man-hours scouring for pirated content.

YouTube needs to set up filters that can immediately detect pirated video and, ideally, prevent the offending party from being able to upload it in the first place. Or at the very least they need to be more proactive about policing themselves.

These media companies incur huge expenses in developing their movies and shows, and they're entitled to reap the full benefit of the revenues, since they are obviously the ones who put all the effort into creating the content in the first place.

These lawsuits and subpoenas by the media companies are probably designed mostly to get YouTube and its parent company to start taking these copyright issues more seriously and take action immediately. Many of these companies would probably like to make deals with Google and YouTube at some point, because the site provides valuable exposure - it's just a matter of money.

Google is obviously not going to take this lying down. Few people think that Google will actually end up paying $1 billion to Viacom. This will likely just be Viacom's way of lighting a fire under Google's ass to work out a distribution deal that both companies can live with.

It is probably a smart move on Viacom's part to nip this in the bud - because the longer it allows this behavior to carry on, the harder it will be to undo it.

Is MySpace a Presidential Prognosticator?

I read an interesting article this afternoon in Newsweek about the Web Site techPresident.com, which follows the online campaign strategies of prospective candidates. Along with its blogs and links to official campaign and party Web sites, the site includes a constantly-updated tally of how many friends each candidate has on his or her MySpace account.

Not surprisingly, Barack Obama is far and away the most popular, with (as of this posting) 53,206 friends - more than all the other candidates - Democrat and Republican - combined. Hillary Clinton is a distant second with 26, 087, and John Edwards third with 12, 338.

What is surprising is the Republican candidate with the most MySpace friends (drumroll).......Ron Paul. Yeah, I know - who the hell is Ron Paul? He's a 71-year-old GOP congressman and physician from Texas who formed a presidential exploratory committee on Jan. 11.

Paul's got a libertarian ideology (he had actually joined the Libertarian Party in 1987), is against most increases in taxes or government spending and promotes a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Paul has so far garnered 3, 165 friends, far less than his Democrat opponents, but far more than the closest GOP candidate, Mitt Romney, with only 1807 friends.

Whether any of these numbers amount to a hill of beans is rather dubious, given the extreme fickleness of the (mostly) youthful MySpace users, and the obvious fact that people can set up as many accounts as they want.

It's just interesting that this random guy pops out of the wild blue yonder, ahead of the presumed GOP front runners Rudy Giuliani (who currently has a measly 863 friends) and John McCain (the only GOP candidate who has lost friends since last week - a stunning 84.7 percent since the previous week - he's now down to 211).

Giuliani and McCain might believe that social networking sites are mostly a waste of time in their case (which may very well be true), since their potential backers tend to be older, more affluent (and reliable) than those who vote Democrat.

So I wouldn't expect them to bother mounting any attack ads against Ron Paul in the near future.