What Murdoch Can Learn From Hearst

Tom Stoddart / Getty Images; Bettmann / Corbis Rupert Murdoch's pursuit of a paid online content model — first reported in the Daily Beast — indicates that the Aussie media tycoon understands his newspaper business' dire predicament. David Nasaw, author of The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst reveals the cautionary lessons the first great press baron can teach the last one.

They were the only sons of rich men who owned newspapers. Both left home to attend the best schools, did not do terribly well, returned home, went into the newspaper business, and did terribly, terribly well. They built newspaper empires, then audaciously and against the advice of their advisors, expanded into new media, amassing millions and acquiring substantial political influence. They hobnobbed with presidents and prime ministers on several continents, positioned themselves on the right (but not too far right), and made money with each new venture. Only as they approached their middle 70s was their forward progress halted during a worldwide depression.Their advisors urged them to shed losing newspaper assets and anoint successors or, at least, recognize their mortality and prepare for succession. They refused.

Will Rupert realize before it’s far too late that if his newspapers are to have any chance of survival in the Obama era, he’s got to make the sort of changes Hearst refused to?

God bless Murdoch for his purchase of the Wall Street Journal for a price far in excess of what it was worth—and his continuing publication of giant loss-leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.Two cheers for the last publisher standing.

But what a flawed hero is our Rupert.Like Hearst, he was never a pioneer or much of an innovator as a newspaper publisher. Just as Hearst learned from Joseph Pulitzer how to put out a reader-friendly, sensationalist, crusading, visually-exciting, cartoon- and comic-filled, overstuffed broadsheet, so did Murdoch borrow and then improve the racy, reality-challenged, one sale at a time, over the top Fleet Street tabloid.Achieving almost overnight success as newspaper publishers, both men held tight to their formulas, paying little attention to the changing demographics, needs, and desires of their reading publics. Their myopia vis-à-vis their newspapers was and, in Murdoch’s case, is as astounding as their forward-looking adventurism in other media.

As circulation and advertising plummeted through the 1930s, Hearst held tight to his once winning formula and refused to make changes in substance or style, refused even to jettison poor old tired Arthur Brisbane whose editorials continued to mar his front pages for years after Brisbane had anything left to say. The result of Hearst's rigid reluctance to adjust to the times was disaster, default, and the disappearance of the Hearst chain of big-city papers, most of which fell long ago, with the biggest one still standing—in San Francisco—on very wobbly legs. Murdoch's papers are also wobbling, with the banks and Wall Street nibbling at his heels, but they're still alive and, with a bit of the same daring he's shown in the past in other media, it's just possible he could turn them around.