Hot Topic - News Corporation/Rupert Murdoch
There are, we know, no final exams for aspiring CEO’s. We take a test before driving an automobile and several before flying a jet aircraft. There’s even, usually, an examination required to become an accountant, lawyer or brain surgeon. Those chosen to lead organizations employing and serving tens of thousands, millions arguably, arrive at the corner office by other means.
News media distinguishes itself from other enterprises with claims of a greater ethic. Bank shareholders, we’ve learned, expect and get big profits, dividends and no silly chit-chat. Are we so different?
Institutions take to aging much like the people who direct them. Few are content riding off into the sunset, warmed by fulfillment and humbled by knowledge. The quest, the game, becomes the elixir. Would that it be so easy.
There is no thrill greater than walking right up to that edge, wiggling your toes over it. Some people feel it when jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Landing, intact, is reward of the metaphysical kind. Worrying about bad things and consequences are for wimps and little people.
The hourly revelations, charges and retorts about News Corporation have rapt the media world. Rupert Murdoch is facing, arguably, his greatest challenge. The seeds run deep and, as is said, one reaps what one sows.
Beginning in the late 20th Century, after ‘management by objectives’ and ‘in search of excellence’ had fallen away, private sector organizations uncovered new value – and new values – in serving up well-turned phrases for two increasingly important stakeholders: investors and governments. The corporate communications industry – something between lobbying and advertising – could, it said, not only add value but create it. There are, of course, limits.
It was a dreadful week. All that stirred was a constant buzz inside the head. There’d been no Murdoch news. Not a Tweet. Then, just as the drugs kicked in, a torrent.
Rupert Murdoch will reportedly fly to London this week to rally his generals for the next skirmish in a war he cannot lose. The war to gain decisive competitive advantage for News Corporation in the UK media market is one he did not expect to fight on open terrain. Battles are very hard to control.
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