News of the World Website Now Linking to Offers on the Web
It’s been 24 days since Britain’s leading Sunday tabloid The News of the World shut down its print operations in the aftermath of a phone hacking scandal. Circulation for the final print edition as well as visits to the paper’s website rose exponentially after it was announced that Rupuert Murdoch and News Corp. were planning to pull the plug on the 168-year-old publication.
Three and a half weeks later, The News of World website is a very barren virtual landscape indeed. The home page to the “World’s Greatest Newspaper” shows an image containing a few of its top scoops and the words “Thank You & Goodbye.”
A click on the image sends the visitor to a site called Offers on the Web. A site which, according to its About Us section, reveals the following information:
OffersontheWeb are wholly owned and run by Aspen House Marketing Ltd.
Aspen are a family run fulfilment company who have been established since 1995.
When a National newspaper runs a special offer or a promotion, readers are often asked to write in or respond by telephone through a website or to a special address …
We are a full service fulfilment house which means we are designed to take orders by phone, post & web coupon and send out mass mailings, deal with returns, and keep everyone informed about what’s going on.
Will Murdoch Scandal Bring Change at The New York Times and Washington Post?
One of the interesting aspects of the current News Corp affair is the striking corporate boardroom similarity the parent company of The Wall Street Journal bears with the owners of the other serious national broadsheet, The New York Times.
Both companies are Wall Street dinosaurs in at least one sense; each relies on a dual-class share structure. Dual-class stock, as the name suggests, creates a class society amongst shareholders. In most public companies there is at least some semblance of investment democracy: one share equals one vote. But in a dual-class stock, one type of share may be the equivalent of one vote, another could represent ten.
Hence, Rupert Murdoch can own 12 percent of News Corp but have 40 percent of its voting rights. Other companies with dual-class stock are Washington Post and Ford, as well as tech darlings LinkedIn and Google.
News Corp, The New York Times and The Washington Post have each represented a horrible investment for shareholders in recent years, and not all to do with reasons associated with the decline of print journalism. All are controlled by families – the Murdochs, Sulzbergers and Grahams – with a disproportionate amount of influence compared to actual shares owned.
One consequence of the News Corp fiasco will almost certainly be a shakeup of the company’s share structure and its somnambulant board (comprised of mostly Murdoch family and a coterie of Murdoch pals). Both factors contributed to a string of questionable decisions within a company in which one man essentially dictates what will be done.
Most likely, shareholders in The New York Times and Washington Post would not put up too much of a fuss if a little control were wrested from the grips of the head honchos of those companies as well.
If Murdoch Leaves Google …
Here are some of the stories we would have missed recently if we did not go directly to the sites owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The imminent Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie break-up. According to a story in Sunday’s New York Post, Brangelina are going to split (yet again). A new book claims that Pitt’s marijuana addiction and Jolie’s psychological instability will lead them to part ways sooner than later. The couple are arguing day and not, says Ian Halperin in “Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.”
If you were unable to buy a copy of The Sun or go directly to the paper’s Web site, you would have missed these shots of George Clooney’s new girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis.
More serious minded readers would have not had the opportunity to read this piece on deficits by Karl Rove, a man who has some experience with deficits.
