Doomed?

If you’re in the traditional media, and your employer just happens to be the target of a stock market raid by a competitor, one thing you do – besides watching the share price and gossiping with colleagues – is check out what Crikey has to say:

There will be endless scenarios played out over the coming months – does Rural Press want the regional papers, who gets the internet properties, how would a Packer-owned AFR cover PBL — but the bottom line is that the once great independent media company John Fairfax probably won’t exist by April Fool’s Day next year.

And that will be a sad thing for Australia’s democracy – particularly if the carve-up is conceived and directed by Australia’s two richest families in concert with the utterly inappropriate Fairfax chairman, Ron Walker.

My guess is as good as yours, but you’ve got to scratch your head wonder if Howard and Coonan really saw this thing coming.

Meanwhile, there’s this little-understood argument about new media. I reckon Trevor’s on to something with this post:

The media world is going horizontal. That doesn’t mean that newspapers, television and radio are doomed. Far from it. But it does mean that we are entering a different world, a far more diverse media world and our regulators and policy-makers need to understand it.

Update: Rupert Murdoch is on record hosing down the Fairfax breakup speculation, in this yarn. "It’s just a strategic holding. We don’t have any particular plans for it. Certainly no plans to take over Fairfax, and at this stage, no plans to take over anything else out there," [Murdoch] said.