Myspace Gets Roomier--Slashes 5% of Workforce

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Myspace: new owner, same curse.

The social networking site focused on streaming music and discovering new artists, laid off five percent of its staff in what CEO Chris Vanderhook termed a consolidation aimed at moving the beleagured company toward operating in the black, according to an article last Friday in the Los Angeles Business Journal (www.labusinessjournal.com).

The 10-year-old Myspace was purchased for a song by Specific Media Group and singer/actor Justin Timberlake in June 2011, for roughly $35 million from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which shelled out $580 million to acquire the company in July 2005.  Although Myspace last month boasted gains to 36 million visitors, up from 24 million in June, ComScore paints a bleaker picture, citing an 81 percent decline in traffic to the site from June 2011, to August 2013, the LA Business Journal article reported.

The company did not specify the number of staffers pink-slipped, but the Journal article estimated that 14 workers were terminated based on the 290 employees Myspace lists on LinkedIn. Once the prettiest girl in the room until Facebook emerged, Myspace unveiled its made-over Web site in January.

Slamming the Gate[House] on Times Herald-Record; Photo Dept. Axed

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When private equity manager Fortress Investment Group, LLC, the majority owner of GateHouse Media, Inc., wrested the Dow Jones Local Media Group ("DJLMG") passel of newspapers from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (see "TUOL" post 9/4/13), it generated uneasiness about job reductions chainwide, particularly in light of GateHouse itself being in the throes of a structured bankruptcy (see "TUOL" post 3/27/13).

Well, as Romanesko.com reports today, the shoe has dropped, or more aptly, the camera has hit the floor and smashed.  The Middletown (N.Y.) Times Herald-Record, the flagship daily among the 33 papers in the DJLMG, has pink-slipped its four-member photography department--collectively, almost 100 years of photojournalism experience--and will rely on freelancers, according to Romanesko.

The Herald-Record also axed three newsroom managers, including an editor whose tenure at the daily exceeded 40 years. The Middletown daily wasn't the only newspaper feeling the pain as journalism professor Dan Kennedy's Media Nation blog reported that seven full-time and ten part-time staffers in GateHouse's Cape Cod Media Group were also let go. Publisher Peter Meyer's letter to staffers did not identify which employees were terminated.

The SouthCoast Media Group, also part of the unhappy GateHouse family, axed four full-time and four part-time staffers. The New Bedford (Mass.) Standard Times is the best-known publication in that group. (No)Thanksgiving came early this year.

Beyonce's Dad Sues The Sun for Defamation

In Mathew Knowles & Music World Entertainment v. The Sun (Case No. 4:2013-cv-01845), filed last week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the father and former business manager of 31-year-old superstar Beyonce sued a U.K. tabloid for defamation and breach of contract.

According to an article in The Guardian, Knowles, 62, alleges The Sun, which is published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.-owned NI Group Ltd., doctored a March 2013, interview he gave to Sun reporter Georgina Dickinson so as to appear as if his singer/actress daughter had "cut him out of her life." Additionally, the lawsuit contends that The Sun reneged on a contractual commitment to pay Knowles, who oversaw his daughter's career until 2011, for the exclusive sit-down interview.

The Complaint alleges that Dickinson's original text submitted to editors was radically rewritten to portray a father/daughter rift that doesn't exist. Knowles acknowledges the professional break-up with Beyonce, who is married to rapper Jay-Z, but claims a strong personal bond remains between them that was allegedly misrepresented in The Sun article that claimed he had yet to meet his granddaughter, Blue Ivy, who was 14 months old when the interview occurred.

The suit, to which The Sun  has yet to respond, seeks actual and punitive damages.

Fox News Network Sued by Widow Whose Husband's Suicide Was Inadvertenty Telecast

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A woman this week in Maricopa County (Ariz.) Superior Court sued Fox News Network, News Corp. and Fox Entertainment for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress after coverage of an 80-mile car chase involving her husband and police ended with his suicide being inadvertently telecast, according to a Courthouse News Service article.

Studio B with Shepard Smith broadcast portions of the police pursuit of JoDon Romero in Phoenix and the surrounding area on September 28, 2012, according to Plaintiff Angela Rodriguez's complaint. During one segment, Romero emerged from his vehicle, racing through the desert brandishing a gun. Despite Smith's instructions to "get off," according to the complaint, coverage didn't break off, and because of the alleged failure to delay the broadcast, Romero's fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound aired nationwide. The complaint cites Smith's on-air apology for the inadvertent footage of the suicide.

According to Rodriguez's complaint, her children suffered post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms after seeing the footage on YouTube that classmates purportedly discussed in school. The complaint seeks punitive and compensatory damages for the children, who Rodriguez claims have been too depressed to attend school since viewing their father's shooting.

Cower of London: Times Slashes 20 Editorial Positions

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Shrinking circulation and vanishing ad revenues apparently are a problem across the pond, too, as the News Corp.-owned Times of London announced 20 editorial staffers are being pink-slipped, according to a story in The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk).

Citing the scheduled end-of-the-month break-up by News Corp. of its newspaper, book publishing, television and film entities into two separate companies, acting Times Editor John Witherow warned that News International, publisher of the Times and Sunday Times, no longer can rely on receiving subsidies from better-performing media outlets, such as the tabloid Sun with its daily page 3 pinup of topless young women, according to The Guardian article. 

The layoffs will reduce the Times editorial staff by just under 10 percent. Witherow dismissed talk of any merger of the editorial staffs of the Times and Sunday Times. Times' newspapers sustained total losses of 28.7 million pounds ($44,760,993) for the fiscal year ending July 1, 2012, compared to a year earlier, when red ink added up to 11.8 million pounds ($18,408,120).

Roughly a hundred editorial positions were eliminated in 2011 by the Times and Sunday Times combined.

Boston Marathon Bombing 'Bag Men' Front Page Photo Sparks Libel Suit Against NY Post

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A defamation suit against the News Corp.-owned tabloid New York Post has been filed in Suffolk County (Mass.) Superior Court by two men who appeared in a page one photo at the peak of the police manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers.

According to articles by Reuters and the National Law Journal, 24-year-old Yassine Zaime and 16-year-old Salheddin Barhoum are suing the Post for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The two Moroccan emigres, avid running enthusiasts, watched participants near the finish line in the Boston Marathon in April, but left two hours before rigged pressure cooker explosive devices detonated, killing three and wounding hundreds of spectators.

According to the plaintiffs' complaint, the two men voluntarily went to their respective local police stations to answer questions about their presence at the race after learning that a photo of them was circulating on various social media sites. The complaint states that on April 18, the same day police purportedly exonerated them, a photo of the two men appeared on page 1 of the Post with the headline: "Bag Men: Feds seek this duo pictured at Boston Marathon."

The lead sentence of the Post story that day began: "Investigators probing the deadly Boston marathon bombings are circulating photos of two men spotted chatting near the packed finish line, the Post has learned."  Inside pages depicted two more photos of the plaintiffs, in one of which, a plaintiff's head was circled in red and captioned: "Cops are seeking these two men (above) who were spotted near the site of the Boston blasts."

Later that same day, the FBI released photos of  two Chechen brothers authorities identified as suspects in the bombing, Tamarlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the former of whom died in a firefight with police and the latter of whom remains in custody.

"The plaintiffs were not suspects and were not being sought by law enforcement," the complaint alleges. "The Post had no basis whatsoever to suggest that they were, especially in light of a warning on Wednesday to news media, by federal authorities, to exercise caution in reporting about this very matter."

The complaint further alleges: "The front page would lead a reasonable reader to believe that plaintiffs had bombs in their bags, that they were involved in causing the Boston Marathon bombing."

For its part, the Post maintains it never identified the two men as "suspects," but rather, as two men whom police wanted to find. Included in the Post story on April 18 was a sentence that read: "It was not immediately clear if the men in the law-enforcement photos are the same men in the surveillance videos."  The Post has not published an apology to Zaime or Barhoum.

Price Tag for Hulu Continues to Rise

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El Segundo, Calif.-based pay-TV service DirecTV reportedly is one of three suitors waving more than $1 billion at the owners of Hulu, LLC in hopes of wresting away the on-demand streaming video Web site, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Hulu's owners, News Corp., Comcast and Walt Disney Co., may be tempted by the sweetened pot to unload Hulu after their previous IPO and auction efforts came up short. Hulu airs webisodes, trailers, clips and other advertising-bolstered content from movie studios and cable and commercial networks.

The Bloomberg News article noted the other two seven-figure bidders besides DirecTV, the nation's second-largest pay-tv company, have not yet been identified.  Other companies who have tendered offers to acquire Hulu include Time Warner Cable, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and private equity firm KKR & Co.

Cod in the Act: Cape Daily Fires 31-Year Veteran Who Made Up Sources

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Cape Cod Times Publisher Peter Meyer and Editor Paul Pronovost have published an apology to readers regarding 59-year-old Karen Jeffrey, a Times staff writer, who was fired after an internal audit revealed she allegedly had used fake names and invented sources in 34 stories dating back to 1998.

Jeffrey joined the Times in 1981. The daily is owned by the News Corp. subsidiary Dow Jones Local Media Group. According to the published apology, Jeffrey either used false names or concocted sources in "lighter" feature articles, such as a story on a Boston Red Sox home opener and a piece on young voters, rather than in crime and other "hard" news stories.

A recent piece by Jeffrey concerning Veterans Day raised red flags. The daily's audit purportedly revealed 69 "people" quoted in her stories whom the paper was unable to verify existed.

Murdoch Hacks Off The Daily

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Less than two years after its splashy debut (see "TUOL" post 1/28/11), News Corp.-owned iPad newspaper, The Daily, will cease publication December 15.

According to reports in Fortune, The New York Times and Business Insider, The Daily was losing as much as $30 million annually since it first appeared in February 2011. Its Editor-in-Chief, Jesse Angelo, will become Publisher of the New York Post. News Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch said an undisclosed number of Daily staffers, along with technology and other assets of the electronic paper, also will be folded into the Post.

"We could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term," Murdoch conceded. Business Insider reports that editorial staffers being jettisoned will receive three-months severance pay. 

The Daily lost a third of its then 170-member workforce last summer because of lagging ad revenue and circulation (see "TUOL" post 8/1/12). Reuters first reported The Daily's imminent demise late last week.

Murdoch's Interest in 'YES' Men

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The YES Network cable channel, which broadcasts the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Nets games, has sold a 49 percent ownership share to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., Bloomberg News reports.

News Corp.'s reported $3 billion deal with the Yankees, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. and other investors for an ownership stake in the pay-TV channel allows for Murdoch to increase his ownership share to 80 percent after three years, according to the Bloomberg article. New York Yankees games will continue to be broadcast on YES through 2042 because of a five-year extension of its current agreement.

According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, the YES Network generates annual pretax earnings of $200 million. "TUOL"'s tireless staff are devoted New York Yankees fans and concerned that the loopy (politically and otherwise) Australian Murdoch will only be interested in the team's "right" fielder.

Murdoch's Daily Tough Tablet to Swallow--50 Staffers Pink-Slipped

(Photo credit: robjewitt)Rupert Murdoch's The Daily, News Corp.'s $30 million national digital news outlet designed for tablets and touchscreen devices that made its splashy debut on Groundhog Day a year ago (see "TUOL" post 1/28/11), has laid off 29 percent of its full-time staff, with 50 employees cut loose, All Things Digital.com reports.

Other changes at The Daily include scrapping the opinion section and relying on content partners, such as FoxSports, to fill its sports section, according to the All Things Digital article. Additionally, the i-Pad only journal will switch to a portrait-only view.

Foreign Investors' Voting Rights Suspended by News Corp. in FCA Compliance

Logo of the Fox Broadcasting Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Foreign shareholders of Class B Common Stock in News Corp. have temporarily had their voting rights suspended to enable the media conglomerate to comply with the Federal Communications Act (FCA) regulation that limits to 25 percent the ownership and voting authority of non-American investors in broadcast stations.

As reported by the New York Times and Wall St. Journal among others, News Corp.'s foreign investors owned roughly 36 percent of the company's Class B shares, necessitating the move. Foreign shareholders still receive dividends and distributions, despite the loss of voting privileges.

News Corp. CEO and chair Rupert Murdoch is an American citizen, but his family, which holds nearly 40 percent of News Corp.'s voting shares, will not vote a portion of its shares. Among the media giant's holdings are 27 television stations nationwide and Fox Broadcasting.

The News Corp. board of directors okayed an immediate suspension of half of foreign investors' voting rights. The vigilant, but ever-playful "TUOL" staff can't help but wonder  if the Murdoch media empire learned of the FCA breach by hacking into FCC commissioners' telephone conversations.

Twitter Adds Another Twit

Image via CrunchBaseNews Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch, 80, joined the Twittersphere on New Year's Eve, The Los Angeles Times and other media outlets breathlessly reported, and already, @RupertMurdoch has more than 104,000 followers.

Besides plugging two films, The Descendants and We Bought a Zoo, produced by movie studios he owns, Murdoch has devoted some of his early 140-character missives to boosting the presidential bid of former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.). Murdoch tweeted: "Good to see Santorum surging in Iowa. Regardless of policies, all debates showed principles, consistency and humility like no others."

Thus far, Murdoch has dispatched 27 tweets and is following 11 fellow Twits, including Eric Cantor and Peggy Noonan, along with the Wall St. Journal and New York Post, which are properties of News Corp.

Meanwhile, The Guardian and Associated Press have apologized for being snookered by a faux Twitter account the publications mistook for being written by Murdoch's Missus, Wendi Deng. Turns out @Wendi Deng was being written as a lark by some yet-to-be-identified guy in London. The Twitter bird has egg on its face, too, having wrongly verified the Deng account, if only briefly.

"TUOL" hopes Rupert doesn't hold back on Twitter, and looks forward to reading tweets such as: "Fox News fair & balanced? LOL;" and "Junior's testifying @Parliament again? WTF?"

Myspace Class Action Suit Target for Allegedly Sharing Personal Data

Image via CrunchBaseBrooklyn resident and Myspace member Linda Virtue has her name attached as plaintiff to a 13-count class-action suit filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York against the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based social media platform for allegedly sharing members' personal data and Internet browsing histories with aggregators without the members' approval.

The 33-page complaint in Virtue v. Myspace, Inc (Case No. 11-cv-1800) includes counts alleging common law claims, such as conversion, breach of contract, breach of the implied warranty of good faith and fair dealing, and invasion of privacy, along with violation of the Stored Data Communications Act [18 U.S.C. sec. 2701 et seq.] and unfair and fraudulent business practices. According to Bloomberg News, the plaintiffs contend that Myspace provides the names and browsing history of users to aggregators while at the same time assuring members they can restrict access to their personal information.

Nothing like kicking Myspace when it's down. According to the Bloomberg article, Myspace traffic plunged 29 percent in February to 62.6 million visitors worldwide, compared to 88 million global visitors in 2010.  Myspace owner News Corp. reportedly is looking to unload the social media platform to online music Website www.Vevo.com

Blimey! Scotland Yard Pinches Murdoch Journos for Hacking & Wiretapping

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe Guardian's online edition (guardian.co.uk) reports today that the naughty tabloid News of the World ("NoW") (www.newsoftheworld.co.uk), which is owned by News Group Newspapers, Ltd., a subsidiary of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has seen one of its principal reporters and a former news editor who NoW fired in January arrested by Scotland Yard for allegedly intercepting mobile phone voice messages.

Ian Edmondson, 50, and 42-year-old Neville Thurlbeck were arrested by Scotland Yard on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications (Sec. 1(1) of Criminal Law Act 1977) and unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000). Both Edmondson and Thurlbeck have denied criminal wrongdoing.

MySpace for Rent?

Image via CrunchBaseThe Web site All Things Digital ("ATD") claims News Corp.-owned MySpace may lay off at least 50 percent of its 1000-member staff tomorrow.

ATD, which also is part of Murdoch's News Corp. holdings, said the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace is being shopped to private equity firms. Rumors also abound that Yahoo may line up as a buyer.  The travails of MySpace have been well-chronicled by this blog (see "TUOL" posts 10/13/10, 8/6/10 & 6/24/09).

'We Donate, You Decide'

Image via CrunchBaseThe Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp., parent of Fox News, The Wall St. Journal, The New York Post and other media entities, and its political action committee, News America Holdings, have contributed $1 million to the Republican Governors Assn.("RPA"), The New York Times reported in a story first-broken by Bloomberg News.

Campaign finance trackers deemed the $1 million contribution one of the largest political donations ever given by a media organization.  A News Corp. spokesperson said the RPA's stance on low taxes and economic growth, rather than its political affiliation, was the basis for the contribution.  News Corp. has donated to Republican and Democratic causes and candidates in the past, but never in such a large sum.

The News Corp. spokesperson said the media conglomerate's wall separating editorial and business decisions would ensure that the political contribution does not influence political news coverage. Viewers of Fox News might wonder whether sentries at the "wall"  have a standing order to  "detain all Democrats."

Virtual Newsstand Aim of Joint Venture of Media Conglomerates

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Four media giants that focus on magazines and the newspaper-heavy News Corp. are joining forces in a joint venture to create a digital newsstand.

Conde Nast, Time, Inc., Meredith, the Hearst Corp. and News Corp. visualize creating an industry-standard platform and an online store, similar to iTunes, where the media consortium can sell  publications to consumers who can view them on their cell phones, electronic readers, the Internet, and other digital devices yet to be devised.  The media moguls believe advertisers will pay a higher price for placement in these digital publications.

The joint venture is thus far, nameless, and none of its members has disclosed a dollar amount they expect to contribute to the effort. However, Time, Inc. executive veep John Squires will serve as the venture's interim general manager.  The success of the project is dependent on the willingness of Amazon's Kindle e-reader and Apple's iTunes to adopt the joint venture's technology standards.

"TUOL" finds it hard to imagine digitally reading magazines in the bathroom and laments the likely extinction of magazine newsstands where cranky vendors short-change the customers and yell at them not to thumb through the adult periodicals.

MySpace Zaps News Corp. 4Q Earnings; Rupe Wants $$ for Content

Smacked by massive impairment and restructuring charges tied to enfeebled MySpace, News Corp. reported a loss of $203 million for the fiscal fourth quarter ending June 30.

The 4Q loss of 8 cents a share compares unfavorably to 4Q results a year ago that showed a profit of $1.1 billion or 43 cents a share. News Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch vowed to begin charging a fee for online content for his newspaper and television news holdings. Presently, The Wall St. Journal, owned by Murdoch, successfully operates a firewall, but it's a niche publication for which its business subscribers are willing to pony up. With competitors such as BBC and CNN offering news content for free, it's questionable whether folks would ante up for the same news online from Fox, though some people would probably pay to keep the tabloid musings of The New York Post off the Internet.

According to its Website, News. Corp. has total assets of $53 billion and annual revenues of $30 billion as of June 30, 2009. News Corp. stock (NWS) is trading at $12.56 a share on the NASDAQ exchange at this hour.