WHEN MURDOCH IS THE MESSAGE 

How much power does Rupert Murdoch have over political leaders? Not a jot. Nary a skerrick. Not a sausage. Nada. Zippo. Rien du tout. Nuffink. None. Gedouttahere! Rupert who?

They all say so. Every single one. Well that’s a relief.

So how much power does he have over corporate leaders, who have the advantage that they don’t need to get re-elected by popular vote? Would he be able, say, to get Australia’s commercial television stations to refuse to run an anti-Murdoch ad days before an election? How implausible.

Several conclusions will be drawn from the wreckage of the current federal election. The first one is the bitter truth that complaining about adverse media coverage, no matter how justified, is usually not a winning game. It becomes a diversion.

The second conclusion will be whether the ferociously one-sided coverage by News Corp Australia actually won the election for Tony Abbott. That one’s harder to pick.

My post “It Was Col Allan Wot Won It” has had a range of interesting responses. Some have been very emphatic that what appears on the front page of a paper like the Daily Telegraph is seen by such a minor part of the population that it has little impact on nationwide voting intentions; and that the idea that News Corp Australia has any sort of near-monopoly on news in three states is redundant at a time when you can get almost any news service in the world on the Net.

My starting assumption was that the Coalition was going to win this election anyway. My focus was not on whether the News Corp coverage actually shifted votes, but whether News Corp editors and more importantly Rupert Murdoch himself would claim and/or believe that they had shifted votes.

I think that’s a no-brainer.

Secondly, for Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart or Darwin, where the only options are News Corp papers, a section of the community does not go on to the Net for news. They want a paper. Often it’s what they read at work. Frequently it’s an older cohort.

The force multiplier here is the role that newspapers still have in setting the agenda for talkback radio and television news and current affairs, which means you don’t actually have to read newspapers to be influenced by them.

What’s more interesting for me is what this means for Murdoch’s business model. Some numbers: as of June 2013, on average 1,780,570 metropolitan newspapers were sold each day from Monday to Friday. Some 68.9 per cent of them were produced by News Corp Australia.

If you add in Saturday and Sunday editions, a total 13.69 million metro newspapers were sold each week. News Corp sold 70.2 per cent of them. The reason for the higher weekly reach is that News blitzes the country on Sunday, when it sells 80.9 per cent of metro papers (see table at end). In some states it’s said to be the only day that News makes a profit.

These are higher percentage figures than those quoted in the Finkelstein inquiry, a reflection of the changing mix as Fairfax has dropped unprofitable sales.

Compare this picture with Tuesday’s Age-Nielsen poll of voting intentions in Queensland, tracked against age.

Age/Nielsen Poll.  What Queenslanders say
Age vs % voting intentions					SMH Sept 3 2013
		18-24	25-39	40-54	55+	Total
Labor		45	34	29	25	31
Coalition		34	37	44	57	45
Greens		12	10	10	4	8
Family First		4	1	1	1	1
Palmer United Party		1	9	9	8	8
Katter Aust Party		2	5	2	4	4
Other		3	4	5	2	3
% of total registered voters		10.8	24.3	27.8	37.4

The Liberal National Party primary vote is only 34 per cent for 18-24-year-olds. The LNP’s strongest base is those aged 55 and over, where 57 per cent support the LNP. That’s without counting the 12 per cent of 55-plus who say they are voting for Katter Australia Party or Palmer United Party.

These are volatile results based on relatively small samples in some age groups. But the age skew is a consistent element in polljng results. The youth vote for Labor does not compensate for the larger older cohort. The over 55s make up 37.4 per cent of total registered voters.

Consider that combination: the Courier Mail has been virulently anti-Labor. The cohort that most reflects that viewpoint in the current poll is the over 55s, who are also arguably the group most likely to read newspapers and least likely to seek their news elsewhere.

Which comes first—would the voting intentions be the same without the coverage or is it a product of the coverage? But that’s not really the question. We need to ask, what’s the business model?

The Courier Mail and the Daily Telegraph have been anti-Labor to the point of caricature. This is not newspaper reporting as we have previously seen it. The effect is more akin to Alan Jones and Ray Hadley on talkback radio.

Now there’s a thing. As I wrote last November, if you examine 2GB’s ratings, the increase in Alan Jones’ ratings has come from the over-55s. That cohort has made John Singleton and Mark Carnegie a lot of money (see right).

Back at News Corp Australia, Col Allan as per his original timeline was to return to the US in October. Whether he does remains to be seen. But he has set a template for a new style of newspaper here, whether he’s here or not.

Joe Pompo in his piece on Allan’s move to Australia in Capital New York put the expectations for Allan’s return to the US as minimal:

“The common consensus is: I don’t think there’s anybody who thinks Col will be returning,” one insider told Capital. “Most people are expecting that it’s not a temporary change,” said another. “The obvious message is that Jesse’s in charge,” said a third, adding: “The website is what’s important now. Jesse is the future, Col is the past.”

Pompo describes an all-day retreat New York Post execs went to late last year for a crash course in digital journalism led by Jesse Angelo, who is acting as editor of the Post in Allan’s absence. Allan started the session from up the back of the room by saying:

“As most of you know, there was nobody less interested in the Internet at this newspaper than me. It seems I was wrong about that.”

If you want an example of “grin-fucking”, as expounded by Kim Williams, this line has to be it. The New York Post is having a major relaunch of its online site this month and Allan isn’t there for it. Digital journalism is really so not about the Tummy Compass. Allan might have been saying what he had to in the US, but there’s no way he had to believe it.

Hence the scorn he showed when he was cut loose in Australia.

Digital journalism is not something to sidle into. It upsets everything about the way that news is reported.

As the major newspaper group in Australia News Corp has enormous resources at its disposal that could make it an overwhelming force online.

But it’s not going that way. Kim Williams’ exit leaves the company going back to its knitting, making the strategic decision that embracing digital will be too costly even as its print ad revenue dives.

News Corp Australia is not embracing the digital future. It’s looking to keep its print papers going.

And that leaves the challenging prospect that News Corp Australia will seek a natural audience for its legacy products. Aint It Awful Media. It’s the same audience that 2GB chases: angry old geezers.

So if you’re thinking about where News Corp’s papers go after the election, then consider: what would Ray Hadley and Alan Jones do? They’re not going to stop being angry. It’s way too profitable for that.

For News, you can see the business sense in it. The effect on the broader body politic takes a little thinking about.

Australian metro circulations June 2013
	Monday-Friday			Saturday			Sunday			Weekly total papers sold
	Jun-12	Jun-13		Jun-12	Jun-13		Jun-12	Jun-13		Jun-12	Jun-13
Advertiser/Sunday Mail	172,899	155,635		231,529	208,624		271,293	246,007		1,367,317	1,232,806
Age	169,582	142,050		238,818	203,753		194,040	171,255		1,280,768	1,085,258
Australian	129,655	116,655		285,644	254,891					933,919	838,166
Aust. Financial Review	71,061	66,220		75,575	64,478					430,880	395,578
Courier-Mail/Sunday Mail	189,733	173,095		250,988	223,335		450,922	415,808		1,650,575	1,504,618
Daily Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph	350,059	310,724		325,501	290,922		610,253	541,749		2,686,049	2,386,291
Herald Sun	463,543	416,027		454,318	416,662		529,063	485,943		3,301,096	2,982,740
Sydney Morning Herald	170,666	141,699		292,413	233,335					1,145,743	941,830
Sun-Herald							346,960	276,172		346,960	276,172
West Australian	195,394	178,385		301,923	290,636					1,278,893	1,182,561
Sunday Times WA							274,955	250,290		274,955	250,290
Canberra Times	28,550	26,153		46,879	40,475		29,134	26,138		218,763	197,378
Mercury	40,240	37,419		55,665	51,302		52,590	48,605		309,455	287,002
NT News	18,977	16,508		28,874	26,375		21,034	18,087		144,793	127,002
Total	2,000,359	1,780,570		2,588,127	2,304,788		2,780,244	2,480,054	##	15,370,166	13,687,692
News Corp Aust	1,365,106	1,226,063		1,632,519	1,472,111		2,210,110	2,006,489	##	10,668,159	9,608,915
% News Corp	68.24%	68.86%		63.08%	63.87%		79.49%	80.91%	##	69.41%	70.20%
*Sunday papers are reported under the Monday-Saturday title eg Sunday Telegraph under Telegraph, Sunday Mail (Qld) under Courier Mail. Exception Sun Herald.
Weekly papers sold are the average Monday-Friday total multiplied by 5, plus Saturday sales plus Sunday sales