Murdoch can almost single-handedly take apart and re-assemble a complex printing press, but his digital-technology acumen and interest is practically zero. Murdoch’s abiding love of newspapers has turned into a personal antipathy to the Internet: for him it’s a place for porn, thievery, and hackers...
News Corp. isn’t like other media companies. Murdoch can cut through and level all bureaucratic confusion and inaction. If he says it will be paid, then all the voices, which in other companies would tell you why this, logically, might not work, go silent at News Corp. The logic of the situation is remade around Murdoch’s logic.
And even his young wife thinks he's an old fogey. This is surely grounds for divorce:
In one of my favorite Murdoch stories, his wife, Wendi, who had befriended the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, told me about how the “boys” had visited the Murdochs at their ranch in Carmel, California. When I marveled at this relative social mismatch and asked what they might have talked about, Wendi assured me that they had all gotten along very well.
“You know, Rupert,” Wendi said, “he’s always asking questions.”
“But what,” I prodded, “did he exactly ask?”
“He asked,” she said, hesitating only a beat before cracking herself up, “‘Why don’t you read newspapers?’”
1 comment:
Pardon me for not reading the whole paean to Boss Murdo -- I have more pressing things to do than reading about Rupes, such as getting an emery board and filing at the callused spots around my left big toe -- but did it say anywhere that he can change the course of Time itself with the awesome power of his mind? Cause it sounds like they were working up to that.
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