Today's Economist dares to look forward to a post-Murdoch media landscape. It brands Rupert Murdoch 'The last of the moguls' and stops just short of predicting the break-up of News Corporation.

Its editorial makes a connection between the phone-hacking scandal and the old-fashioned, Lord Copper-ish structure of the "family-run public company". This model will die out with Murdoch, it claims. In a separate article, an argument is made that News Corp is "three hypothetical companies: a good one, based on television; a bad one, which makes films; and a downright toxic one, which runs newspapers."

Indeed, the future for newspapers appears grim. Increasingly, the Economist suggests, news content will run across multiple media platforms: people will get their news from the likes of Yahoo News, MSNBC and the BBC, whose news-gathering services will be integrated across television, radio, internet and so on. Niche interests will be catered for by tv- or web-based specialists — Bloomberg for finance, skysports, mumsnet, etc — supplemented by blogs.

This scenario would leave "the suits … firmly in control" of the mainstream media. Rather than promote the opinions and whims of a Murdoch or a Rothermere, these big shareholder-sensitive organisations could be expected to follow the money. What effect would that have on the media landscape? Will we one day look back fondly on the moguls, as we do the idiosyncratic football club chairmen of the 1970s now that teams are owned by private equity firms and absentee landlords?

Until people start paying for newspaper-type content online, I think things will be very grim. Even good internet people like ourselves aren't going to be able to do proper investigative stuff. You might get trade unions running sites, or maybe associations of Labour councils, but online and free to access basically means Guido Fawkes types.

2 aspects of the Murdoch effect concern me.

1. The blatant bias - this may not improve.
2. The debasement of debate to a lowest common "So you'd prefer Hitler", "Speaking as a muvva", "This is a 3rd world country" level.


I never expected the balance to improve.

I have hopes for the level of debate.
Because "Look it's one of those Daily AlFayed reading Retards!!" isn't going to run foul of 20 years of brand loyalty.
(And yes, I realise that's an incredibly crude and low level of debate).

From next Sunday the US government may not be able to meet its financial obligations.

You were all distracted by Rupert Murdoch.

Coincidence?

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

Similar to the Euro crisis, it wasn't the front page story, but neither I nor Parliament really have much influence over big macroeconomic issues.

Africa: I can stick a few quid in an envelope and hope plenty of others do the same.

Murdoch: I feel that knowledge of how rotten sectors of our establishment have become assists my participation in democracy.

I was less impressed by Cameron using the day that Brooks and the Murdochs were in front of the DCMS Select Committee as another "good day to bury bad news" and officially announcing that the NHS was going to be opened up to competition.

I wonder what else he snuck out.

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"If the past really is a foreign country, I'm surprised that 'The Daily Mail' would want to live there.” - Roger Quimbly

A few more privatised prisons for starters.

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Mailwatch. Love us or leave us.
http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

To be fair, it would have been the last day of Parliament sitting before the summer recess, and traditionally has been a day to release unpopular statements, since ages back. The theory being that the 'last day of term' spirit means people don't pay quite so much attention to official press releases (read Dobbs, 'House of Cards'). Murdoch or no, it would have been snuck out that day.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Nice to see Clegg, as per usual, standing up for the views of Lib Dem voters.

I really can't reconcile that Cameron whines about waste and profligacy in the NHS (such as the fabled yacht bought by an NHS trust), what the fuck does he think the boards of Capita et al are going to do with the money?

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