Given the recent partition of the company, and heavy rumours of an impending sale. What do we all see in the future for the current crop of NI chip-wrappers?

I'll give a few of my ideas to get the ball rolling:

The Sun: Richard Desmond will buy it, merge 'newsrooms' with his other rags. We'll see more celebrities tied into his Channel 5 tripe being contractually obligated to write and promote it.

The Times: A shadow of it's former self, but still far too heavy a title for Des. In an ideal world, I'd like to see this being bought by someone like Alexander Lebedev, although any number of oligarchs, Arabs, or indeed even Chinese businesses would be interested in it for it's prestige, and reach over upper-middle England.

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

Hopefully The Times will get picked up by someone who can return it to it's former glory.

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"We were only following orders" - Atos.

I guess I could see Desmond buying the Sun - after all it'd just be a slightly more upmarket version of the smut and gutterpress shit he already peddles.

That said though, papers are a dying business. Unless someone's willing to invest serious time, effort, cash and skill into turning them into online ad-driven communities, it's not going to work. The mail is, for it's gargantuan number of faults, one of the few papers to have adapted to technology with success. (It's also one of the reasons I think their particular brand of hatespeak will persist - once they cut the paper edition they'll screech that nobody should police them when they're on the internet, and will have free reign to moderate comments to remove tricksy ones, post whatever they want and pull it straight away if it causes problems).

I suspect print tabloids are Rupert's babies and everyone else at NewsCorp would get shot of them. especially after the aggravation of the phone hacking scandal. As mentioned circulation is in terminal decline which is great news as they make no contribution to making people better informed. They are attacked from all directions; weekly gossip magazines, TV guides and online news. The sports reporting is probably the only thing keeping them going.

Being left with one tabloid under Desmond's tie in stable is very plausible.

I read in a recent Private Eye that the Mail Group sold off its regional newspapers for an impressive £100m. However, it's not as impressive as the £1.5bn they were offered back in 2005. They declined that offer. Laugh? Mrs Mayle could hear me tittering in the toilet when I read that.

Rupert would certainly never sell his print titles. They are what gives him his enormous political leverage with all the major parties (and UKIP).

Without them, he's just another disgustingly wealthy arsehole.

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

Not News International but indicative of the continued decline of the sector.

Telegraph group cuts 80 print jobs as daily and Sunday titles merge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greensl ... ital-media

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Never underestimate the prestige of print titles. Take them away and he's just a blogger, albeit on a larger scale than most.

That's doing him a disservice. He's arguably one of the world's most influential and powerful broadcasters, too. His film and TV interests are so successful that the NI board continue to indulge him keeping the papers as a nice hobby.

The list of titles and companies owned by News Corp is jaw-dropping:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_as ... orporation

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Soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentity

The Times is clearly a prestige investment, and I think he's consciously kept it less rabid than the Telegraph. I think it must have been very helpful in helping him win over the Wall Street Journal's previous owners (one family, I think).

But the Sun and News of the World look more nuisance than they're worth. James Murdoch, I expect, would get rid of them tmrw.

Why should Rupes, in business terms, care about influencing Britain anyway? Pure nostalgia, I think.

He hates Britain, the monarchy and the establishment. Or should I say he despises them.

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Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

Rupert loves power and the acquisition of same. I doubt if someone of that frame of mind would ever willingly give up the ability to influence governments. It would be like acknowledging his age, mortality and waning sexual prowess.

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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."
Voltaire

You're probably right about that. Perhaps Britain is where he stepped out of his father's shadow.

I wonder how he feels about Fox News and the Wall Street Journal coming out on the wrong side in the American elections. A rational bloke would probably think he'd helped shift American politics to the right, and even in defeat there was considerable victory. But I guess he's not entirely rational, clever though he is.

Well he used to hate some of them for their namby pamby one nation ideas in the 60s and 70s but essentially a populist pose. Most of the establishment are far more wealthy than they were in the era of the social contract and are grateful for the big part Murdoch played in that.

He is essentially a colonial throwback adovocating discredited pre war fringe views of Anglo-Saxon hegemony with UK, Canada and Aus/NZ playing junior partners in the American empire.

Conrad Black was keen on that as well and used to write bizarre articles on why the UK should join NAFTA. He hasn't said too much about that since leaving the state pen.

That's NAFTA with Mexico in? How Anglo-Saxon.