NY Times: Murdoch, a Folk Hero in Silicon Valley. But on the left coast, Mr. Murdoch is truly among friends. The attendees at the Web 2.0 conference know him as the ultimate market timer, the guy who swooped in out of nowhere and bought MySpace for $580 million two years ago, before its audience doubled and before social networks became the platform of the future. And this was before Facebook got a valuation of $15 billion via an investment from Microsoft on Wednesday.
He’s not my hero. And he’s no hero to anyone who gives even half a damn about the future of honorable journalism in this world — which I’m willing to bet includes plenty of folks in Silicon Valley.
Murdoch is brilliant. He’s a genuine risk-taker. He’s more visionary than almost anyone in traditional media. So far so good.
But his publications and broadcast outlets have done more to poison the public sphere than any other media empire, by far. This is not heroic, not as any dictionary I’m familiar with would describe the word.
on Oct 29th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
re:”He’s not my hero. And he’s no hero to anyone who gives even half a damn about the future of honorable journalism in this world”
Good to hear this, Dan… (some of your prior comments re: Murdoch and his enterprises left me confused…) D.
on Oct 30th, 2007 at 6:48 am
He’s not the hero of people in the UK either, but he has that power and stranglehold. He has a major influence on elections in our country. He is undoubtedly a wise operator. But not a hero.