The massive changes under way in publishing make current difficulties look local
One of the very few aspects of the enthralling News Corp drama which has not, so far as I know, attracted much comment is the degree to which the Murdochs, father and son, represent the ongoing dynamic between old and new media. The New York Times reported that Rupert is more attached to print, James to the TV and digital future. And of course at some unconscious level, the son wants to kill his father's business, but that's another story ...
Still, the great hacking scandal remains a last hurrah for newsprint. The library footage images that have accompanied the News of the World story have all been of inky-fingered printers supervising a stream of newspapers rolling off the presses. The News International hacks who have been arrested or disgraced have all been straight from central casting on the Street of Shame.
Murdoch himself is an American citizen. Over in the US, traditional print media are in the middle of an extraordinary upheaval. The e-revolution is sweeping through books and newspapers in a way that might have been anticipated but still has to be seen to be believed. Last week, Julie Bosman in the New York Times described how the time-honoured Radcliffe publishing course at Columbia was having to accommodate the ebook.
Bosman writes that "the summer session began with a focus on 'The Digital Future'. Students were schooled in 'Reinventing the Reading Experience: From Print to Digital' by Nicholas Callaway, the chairman of a company that produces book apps for children. Managers from Penguin Group USA explained how to master 'e-marketing', and a panel of digital experts talked about short-form electronic publishing – not quite a magazine article, not quite a book – which is so new, the genre doesn't really have a name."
Quite so. This is a future for the printed word that will challenge News International as fiercely as any parliamentary inquiry. HarperCollins (Murdoch's sole book publishing asset) is on the extreme edge of the mogul's radar. But the things that are happening in the book world will very quickly begin to have an impact on the inky world of newspapers. Already have, indeed. From that perspective, the much-hyped performances at the select committee were really a sideshow.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jul/21/e-revolution-problem-murdoch-phone-hacking
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