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Media Companies

Rupert Murdoch to Get $28 Million When News Corp. Splits

Rupert Murdoch is going to become an even richer man than he already he is when News Corp. finally splits. According to Bloomberg, Murdoch will be paid $28 million in total compensation when 21st Century Fox and New News Corp. begin their reign.

To make matters even sweeter for Murdoch, the payment is better than last year’s, when he raked in $24 million. The man is doing well. So what’s on Murdoch’s mind lately? Oh, the usual. Bashing The New York Times:

 

News Corp. Reaches $139M Settlement in Shareholder Suit Over Phone-Hacking Scandal

News Corporation reached a $139 million settlement in a lawsuit filed against its board, alleging that the media giant’s top brass put chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s interests before those of the company.

A group of shareholders, suing on behalf of the company, settled a class suit filed in Delaware two years ago claimed the board failed to prevent the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. and negotiate a fair price for the acquisition of Shine Group, a TV production firm owned by the boss’s daughter, Elisabeth Murdoch.

The board put in place new rules, appeasing the plaintiffs, last year.

News Corp. will recover $139 million in insurance proceeds.

“We are pleased to have resolved this matter,” News Corp. said in a statement on Monday. “The agreement reflects the important steps News Corporation has taken over the last year to strengthen our corporate governance and compliance structure and we have committed to building on those efforts going forward.”

The News of the World tabloid, the main antagonist in the phone-hacking debacle, was shuttered in July 2011, months after Murdoch bought Shine in an all-stock deal worth about $675 million.

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David Pecker Considered for Time Inc. CEO Spot

AMI’s top man — David Pecker — is being considered for the top spot at Time Inc. According to the New York Post, Jeff Bewkes has met with Pecker about becoming Time Inc.’s CEO when it spins off. Bewkes has indicated that he wants the new CEO in place before the summer.

As you might expect, Time Inc. staffers aren’t that excited about Pecker. He has kept AMI afloat for so many years through multiple, massive cuts, which won’t exactly inspire confidence in him.

One Time Inc. insider told the Post that if Pecker took the job, there would be plenty of people who would voluntarily depart the publishing house. The source added, “It would really rock the journalists in the company.” We assume the person meant rock in the bad way, not the Slash way.

What Happened to The Wall Street Journal‘s Longform Journalism?

The Wall Street Journal hasn’t won a Pulitzer Prize for its news reporting since 2007. It wasn’t even nominated this year. And a new chart from the Columbia Journalism Review may highlight a reason why.

Since News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch bought the United States’ largest newspaper by circulation six years ago, there has been a steady decline in the long-form journalism that once distinguished the business world’s paper of record.

CJR isn’t the first to notice this. Back in 2011, amid the calamity of News Corp.’s phone-hacking scandal in the U.K., New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera declared the “Fox-ification” of the paper, noting that Murdoch’s Journal was marked by “shorter articles, less depth, an increased emphasis on politics and, weirdly, sometimes surprisingly unsophisticated coverage of business.”

While some of his criticism seems unwarranted — and likely fueled by the chaotic speed with which more and more phone-hacking accusations splashed onto front pages across the English speaking work — the “shorter articles, less depth” argument seems to hold true.

The Journal defended itself with this public statement after CJR‘s Dean Starkman published the chart:

The number of words in an article has never been the barometer by which the quality of a publication or its value to readers should be measured. Every article is reported with unique facts and anecdotes that are needed to best tell the story. We consider those factors, while respecting our readers’ busy lives, when determining the length of an article. Our very strong circulation numbers suggest that readers think we’re doing a good job.

 Read Starkman’s full post (he’s a glorious writer) and The Atlantic‘s Alexis C. Madrigal‘s take, too.

Here Is Rupert Murdoch on the Cover of Bloomberg Businessweek

Rupert Murdoch is a survivor.

No, not just in the sense that he turned 82 last month and, when by summer News Corp. splits in two, is expected to chair the board of two multinational media giants.

The media mogul defied the critics that believed, two years ago, the phone-hacking scandal at his British tabloids would sink him and the company. But today, he remains as powerful as ever.

Here are some highlights from Bloomberg Businessweek‘s cover story on the old fox:

  • Today, Murdoch survives at the helm of a global entertainment and publishing company that, far from being diminished, has soared in value. The day before Murdoch appeared in Parliament, the stock closed at $14.96 a share. On April 12 it closed at $31.54. The company is now valued at $73 billion. Revenue and earnings are up. The company has $3.3 billion in cash. Since July 19, 2011, the Murdoch family’s 38 percent stake of News Corp. Class B voting shares has grown in value from $5.1 billion to $9.5 billion.

Rupert Murdoch Names News Corp. Entertainment Spin-Off 21st Century Fox

Rupert Murdoch has dubbed his soon-to-be-solo television and film company 21st Century Fox ahead of a split from News Corporation’s newspaper and publishing holdings.

The 82-year-old CEO announced the name change in a staff memo Tuesday afternoon, giving the forthcoming company a name that won’t expire for, well, 87 years.

“After much exploration, and valuable input from our executive team, we’ve chosen the name 21stCentury Fox to take us into the future,” Murdoch wrote in the memo, obtained by FishbowlNY. “21st Century Fox is a name that draws upon the rich creativeheritage of Twentieth Century Fox, while also speaking to the innovation and dynamism that must define each of our businesses through the 21st Century.”

21st Century Fox will include News Corp.’s movie and television studios, along with Fox News Channel and other broadcast holdings. News Corp. will continue with newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in New York, the Sun and the Times of London in the U.K. and the Australian in Oz, Murdoch’s homeland. News Corp. will also include publisher HarperCollins and the newswire Dow Jones.

Previously, News Corp. executives said the new entertainment company would be called “Fox Group,” while the less-lucrative publishing arm was referred to internally as the “New News Corp.”

The media giant is slated to be divvied up this summer into two publicly traded companies. Murdoch is expected to chair them both.

Read the full memo after the jump:

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WSJ Merges Six Deals Blogs Into MoneyBeat

 The Wall Street Journal launched yet another blog channel on Monday as the paper rounds out the digital offerings that augment its subscription site.

MoneyBeat combines six of the Journal‘s existing blogs — including MarketBeat, The Source, Overheard and all the global Deal Journals –into one hub dedicated to global finance, markets and mergers and acquisitions.

“MoneyBeat is a one-stop shop for everybody interested in finance and markets, no matter where they are around the world,” Gerard Baker, the paper’s managing editor, said in a statement. “With its vast network of journalists and editors, the Journal is uniquely positioned to deliver lively, round-the-clock news and analysis from the U.S., Asia and Europe.”

The site comes as the Journal diversifies its blog offerings, with the launch last November of The Accelerators and Startup Journal, both focused on entrepreneurialism.

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NY Post Fail? Police Deny Tabloid’s Report of Suspect ‘Under Guard’ [UPDATED]

Nearly two hours after bomb blasts at Boston Marathon’s finish line killed at least two and injured up to 100, the New York Post reported that authorities were guarding a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian national.

But Boston police would not confirm there was a suspect identified at all.

The report, citing unnamed sources, said the suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital. Fox News reported that the suspect was severely burned. The tabloid’s supposed scoop was picked up by numerous sites, including Breitbart.com, TheBlaze and PolicyMic.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said at a press conference at 6 p.m. that no suspects were in custody.

“Those reports are not true, there is no suspect in custody,” Davis said.

Earlier, a Boston police spokeswoman told Talking Points Memo’s Hunter Walker: “Honestly, I don’t know where they’re getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us.”

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2013 Pulitzer Prize: InsideClimate News Takes National, Old Media Wins the Rest

It’s not quite the shakeup we saw in 2012, when the Huffington Post and Politico became the first digital news operations to take home the journalism’s highest honor, but 2013 saw another newcomer to the Pulitzer Prize circles.

InsideClimate News — a non-profit, Brooklyn-based site devoted to environmental reporting — won the Pulitzer for National Reporting, beating out the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. Reporters Lisa Song, Elizabeth McGowan and David Hasemyer won for “their rigorous reports on flawed regulation of the nation’s oil pipelines, focusing on potential ecological dangers posed by diluted bitumen (or “dilbit”), a controversial form of oil.”

The New York Times took home four Pulitzers — for investigative reporting, international reporting, exemplary reporting and feature writing.

Here is the full list of winners:

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Simon & Schuster to Launch Ebook Program With New York City Public Libraries [UPDATED]

Simon & Schuster, among the slowest publishing houses to sell its ebooks to libraries, has finally launched a one-year pilot program making the digital titles available to New York City’s public libraries.

iStockphoto.com

The New York, Brooklyn and Queens public libraries will have access to bestsellers like “The Great Gatsby,” “Lonesome Dove” and “Steve Jobs,” starting April 30, the company said in a press release on Monday.

The latter example there, Walter Isaacson‘s blockbuster biography of the late Apple boss, perfectly illustrates the snail’s pace at which Simon & Schuster’s relationship with public libraries has adapted to the digital age.

Simon & Schuster has remained the only of the Big Six publishers to not make its ebooks available to libraries.

In a piece last December on the “Wild West” of digital licensing, NPR interviewed Brian Kenney, the director of the White Plains Public Library, about the unavailability of ebook offerings. The anecdote he recalled? A guy trying to download “Steve Jobs.”

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