Murdoch to launch a revenue war againts the New York Times

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: guardian.co.uk

Murdoch offers big ad discounts in war on the New York Times
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I see in the Financial Times that Rupert Murdoch is offering steep discounts to advertisers prepared to take space in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

It is part of an aggressive attack on the New York Times, timed just ahead of the 26 April launch of the WSJ's special New York edition. Aggressive? He is virtually giving away space by reportedly offering discounts of between 79 and 83% for full-page ads.

Rightly, the FT points out that the strategy recalls the newspaper price wars Murdoch launched in 1993 by cutting the cover prices of The Times and The Sun.

Murdoch is the ultimate media warrior, prepared to risk any amount of money in order to succeed in a circulation battle against weaker rivals. (The NY Times company has nothing like the resources of Murdoch's News Corp).

News Corp evidently plans to spend $30m (£20m) in this and the next fiscal year to fund the expansion of the Journal's New York edition.

We should see this in the context of Murdoch's much-heralded philosophy that editorial content should not be given away for free because journalism costs money.

Yet giving ad space away for virtually nothing, thereby sacrificing revenue to fund journalism, is supposedly ok - as long as it undermines the capability of an opposition that does spend money on journalism.

Helpfully, New York magazine has revealed just how much the Times devotes to its journalism in the city by comparing its newsroom staffing with that of the Journal's/

The result? On nearly every beat, the Times has two reporters in place for each one of the Journal's. (See the full list here).

On the other hand, it's fair to point out that the Journal's push has reinvigorated the journalism jobs market. According to the New York Observer, by hiring 35 staff, the WSJ has contributed to what it calls "a small boomlet" in journalistic recruitment.

But it says there are other forces at work too: Yahoo is hiring, as is Bloomberg, and ESPN has opened a New York branch to hire some of the city's best print sports journalists. Even the Village Voice has been hiring.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/apr/09/rupert-murdoch-advertising