In a potentially ominous sign for News Ltd’s Australian troopers, News Corp chairman and CEO, International, James Murdoch, chose to ignore The Australian in a session on the company’s journalism “revolution” at the Cannes Lions Festival a week ago.
Although News Ltd has made much of its role as a key player in News Corp’s global trials for content paywalls and tablets, James Murdoch, the man now seen as most likely at News Corp to succeed his father, Rupert, left the Australian operation, and specifically The Australian newspaper, entirely out of his keynote conversation in Cannes.
Murdoch, speaking to a packed auditorium along with DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell in the annual Cannes Debate, preferred to talk only about The Times in London and the New York-based Wall Street Journal when asked by Sorrell about the progress and success of News Corp’s tablets and paywalls strategy.
“I think we are entering a very exciting creative period with titles like the Wall Street Journal or The Times in the UK where the touch screens we now produce for are really unleashing a totally new kind of creativity…” Murdoch told his audience.
A few minutes later, he was asked another question by Sorrell around paywalls and again Murdoch left out what we have been told in Australia is a crucial tripartite global strategy group involving News Ltd and The Australian, The Times and WSJ.
“We look at our journalism business as one of our most exciting business going forward,” James Murdoch said. “From Sky News to The Times to the Wall Street Journal…” No mention of News Ltd, the trials underway in Australia or The Australian.
As seasoned Murdoch watchers later pointed out, the glaring Australian omission would be unlikely under Rupert but is indicative of the lower priority Australia has under James – he has little connection to the home patch from which his father built the News Corp empire. Already, there are expectations for a more pragmatic- perhaps ruthless - treatment of News’ Australian unit under a regime without Rupert.
A number of News Ltd staffers were in Cannes for the session and it is understood the point was not lost on some of them.
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