He's only saying that in the context that he doesn't actually understand or have a grip on this 'revolution', hence his purchase of MySpace.com recently and his other purchase of Easynet, giving him access to the LLU market, both of which smack of desperation.

James writes:

"... hence his purchase of MySpace.com recently and his other purchase of Easynet, giving him access to the LLU market, both of which smack of desperation."

Indeeed - and he he has much to panic about. The model for Sky has started to fall to bits in the past year or so, due to the increasing speed and availability of broadband and it's hard to see his investment in dead tree media going anywhere but down.

He can try to buy his way in, but will his executives have a clue how to develop and run the companies they have bought? Observation suggests big business almost always gets this wrong.

Nice watching evolution at work, isn't it?

Murdoch...........well......
.....but I had expected to see a report on yesterday's rally in support of Freedom for Something. The silence is deafening.

I think you have your dates mixed up. The rally is next Saturday, March 25. And I am in Belfast, not London and it does not look like I will be able to go.

Until last year, Murdoch has taken little notice of the Internet boom ...

In my opinion that comment quite frankly negates any advantages of having Rupert Murdoch in your corner at all, bloggerwise or other. Are we really to believe that it took News International more than 12 years to wake up to the idea of the internet? Somehow I really doubt that.

I hardly think I was indicating he is 'in our corner'. More like we must be having a real effect if even the somnambulists are awaking from their dreams.

Dale: Sorry!........silly me.

It's too bad the article (or Murdoch) isn't more specific. Murdoch is, I believe, making too much of digital media. He is overestimating the difficulty of shifting the core of old media -- information-gathering, writing it up and editing -- to new media. The amateur blogosphere is not even remotely capable now of being a source of basic facts -- the what-where-who etc etc.

Dead-tree newspapers may be dying but their editorial function has enormous inertia and if the eBook readers from Sony et al are any decent, this may be the year in which we start to see the new direction for print media.

(The next element is micro-payments.)

Alternative:

Just imagine if Samizdata's "editors" had a million dollars a year to hire, say 15 professional reporters to report original news.

You have already demonstrated a flare for presentation and a firm (if sometimes misguided!) point-of-view. You have the makings of a news organization right here.

The one thing we've been promised for decades and never got is a screen (plasma crystals or whatever) that you can roll up and stick in your pocket like a paper. With long battery life.

Until that comes off the drawing board, blatts can breathe fairly easy. Laptops are too heavy and cellphones too small.

Fairfax (an Australian/NZ newspaper publisher) recently spent NZ$700m (US$450m'ish) to buy trademe.co.nz, an online auction site that has pretty much decimated the newspaper classified advertisement market here in NZ.

They are Worried.

Millard,
Smart paper is coming. It won't be long, and it will be cheap. We'll have animated billboards and it'll look like Bladerunner. We already have replicants, they're called the Parliamentary Labour Party.

I remember back in the early 1970s, visiting RCA's R&D lab at Sunbury, being told they were on the verge of producing TV screens as flat as mirrors, which could be hung on every room in the home and fed from one central unit.

32 years and counting....