Economy
Kim Williams calls News Corp leaks a festival of vengeance
It’s all over Rupe … he just doesn’t know it …
During my time at News Corporation there were frequent frustrating leaks, much like the one this week, a comprehensive set of numbers on the company’s Australian enterprises.
The leak, published in Crikey, was different only in that the material contained substantial unfiltered data which showed a whole picture rather than the selective briefing process of my day. I haven’t reviewed the numbers since I left News in August 2013, but I imagine they reveal much which has been suspected as to trends in the media.
Inevitably the commentary about the data threw brickbats about my period as chief executive running the Australian company. I described the commentary from News Corporation as a festival of vengeance. However, I do not resile from any of the reforms I initiated (many of which have been abandoned or reversed). Those reforms followed exhaustive analysis and detailed discussion. The decisions were also transparent to the chain of command. I shan’t go on as it would sound defensive, which I don’t need to be.
The commentary misses the point. Also sadly at its core, it repeats a denialist attitude to major behavioural and consumption change for news and information in all media. This is consumer driven and technology enabled. I find this denialism as perplexing now as I did when I was in that chief executive seat.
In my forthcoming book, Rules of Engagement, I emphasise that as a result of digital technology many of the old paradigms and power constructs are breaking down or are already broken. The internet has no respect for the establishment and is a furiously strong levelling agent. New models in all things are becoming commonplace.
This is something of utmost relevance to all media companies and saying that it isn’t so will not change it. Print news media is, over the medium term, profoundly challenged economically. The numbers will reach a point where the high fixed costs simply make no sense and are not sustainable. Rhetoric won’t win the day. I believe that a crunch point may be closer than many think – certainly the horizon in years is probably a single digit number.
In a digital sphere nothing and no one is safe. Merit, ingenuity, speed, flexibility and performance increasingly now rule the day in the media. I think this is on one hand, a good thing because it is giving unparalleled empowerment to invention and creativity, with the opportunity of entirely new ways of working and connecting. On the other hand …
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/kim-williams-calls-news-corp-leaks-a-festival-of-vengeance-20140821-106r64.html#ixzz3BFWPk4Jn
Kim Williams, former chief executive of News Corp, is the author of Rules of Engagement (MUP), published next week.