Michael Wolff

Currently a columnist for Vanity Fair and founder of the news aggregating website Newser.com, Michael Wolff has been covering the media business for decades. For his latest book, The Man Who Owns The News, a biography of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Wolff spent some 60 hours interviewing the media titan, in addition to traveling around the globe to interview his family and closest business associates.

WS: You have covered Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation extensively. What prompted you to write the book?
WOLFF: First, Murdoch’s acquisition of the Dow Jones Company and The Wall Street Journal, which was, certainly from his point of view, the capper of his career. I thought that telling that story provides a really interesting insight into the way that he works.
Number two, I sat down with him because he let me sit down with him, so I thought that was an extraordinary opportunity, because he had never spoken at the length he spoke to me to other journalists. I thought this was something on the order of a historic opportunity to speak to one of the most influential figures of our time.

WS: He also gave you complete access to his family members, which is also extremely difficult to obtain.
WOLFF: Absolutely, the entire family, his entire executive staff. I have to say he was in many respects utterly transparent.

WS: Was there anything that surprised you about him; that you didn’t know and learned through the course of all those interviews?
WOLFF: In the end, the thing I probably found most illuminating was how little vision there really is within News Corp. That the idea that Murdoch has set out on a plan for world domination is largely fanciful. That in fact Murdoch is a catch-as-catch-can kind of guy. That News Corp. has grown over its almost 60 years just as the product of what Rupert Murdoch gets up in the morning and is interested in. In a way, that was both upsetting, that here’s a man who has been as successful as he has been and has done it without much of a plan whatsoever, and it was also kind of inspiring, meeting a guy who has gone through life doing what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. While that is for many people a recipe for failure, for him it was a recipe for enormous success.

WS: What do you think the outcome of the purchase of The Wall Street Journal is going to be for him?
WOLFF: So far he has lost a ton of money and I expect he will continue to lose a ton more. I would probably guess it will not turn out to be the best business decision of his life, but on the other hand, it will in a sense be a monument to him, because he is a newspaperman first and last. And in a certain respect the thing he most wants to be is the last newspaperman standing. And he will be.

WS: Is he out to kill The New York Times or does he want to buy it?
WOLFF: I think he wants to buy The New York Times, and there will be little that could stand in his way to keep him from trying to buy it. Failing that, yes, he will be the fiercest competitor the Times has ever had.

WS: Murdoch’s family is so important to him, and now that Peter Chernin [president and COO of News Corp.] will not be renewing his contract, can you see what the next step might be?
WOLFF: Here are the two things that Murdoch wants: He wants The New York Times and he wants his children to be as close to him as he can possibly convince them to be. That is foremost on his mind.
On an ideal day, Murdoch would not speak to anyone but his own children. And in an ideal world they would all be working for him as his key lieutenants. That may be less than an ideal world for his children, mind you! But he has been trying, and he will continue to try to convince them that it is in that role that their bread is best buttered.

WS: Did you just report that he would like his daughter Elisabeth, who founded her own production company in the U.K., to take over the U.S. studio business?
WOLFF: He would very much like her to run the entertainment side of News Corp. and he would very much like his son Lachlan, who is now in Australia, to run the very large business that News Corp. has in Australia and perhaps run all of News Corp.’s newspapers.

WS: Did he mumble during the interviews? We had that experience.
WOLFF: That was amazing, I had 50, 60 hours of tape with him, which require many, many, many ears that were better than mine to decipher.

WS: Looking at what’s happening to the newspaper business in the U.S. with so many newspapers that are folding, what will that do to the ability of readers to know what’s going on and to get the information they need to know?
WOLFF: It’s specious to say that readers and news consumers have less information now than they had in the past, because they have infinitely more information, infinitely, I would argue, better information, certainly greater tools to deal with information, to redistribute information and to obtain information. That is part of the reason that newspapers are in peril because they represent an old information technology. Newspapers have fallen victim to new technology. They cannot keep up, it’s not that their failure means we don’t have information, it is that they will fail because they cannot keep up with the fact that people have information that is so much better and cheaper than what newspapers can provide.

WS: Where do you see network news going?
WOLFF: Network news is going the way of newspapers. It is outmoded, outdated. It has passed its moment of usefulness.

WS: Is TV news going to move to the cable news channels?
WOLFF: I actually think news is going to move into the digital space. It has moved into it. The place where more people get their news now is on the Internet or through any of the other means of digital delivery. It’s more efficient—you get it faster, you get it better and more targeted and it is in every way a more efficient and more satisfying news experience.

WS: So many young people can’t discern a blog—someone’s opinion—from a verifiable news source. You don’t see a potential problem with that?
WOLFF: I think there have always been problems with that. One of the things that is happening in this new medium is that it’s new. We are talking about a single-digit number of years in which the Internet has been the most powerful news medium on the planet. It is still figuring itself out. I run a business called Newser.com and this is what we do. We speak directly to that question because we are a news aggregator. We are trying to be the people who stand in the line of news fire and say, This is reliable and that’s not reliable. This medium is in the process of solving all of the problems that are created when there is suddenly a new news medium borne out of nothing.

WS: How have you seen advertisers move into the Internet space?
WOLFF: Advertisers, by and large, increasingly prefer the Internet space because it’s cheaper and it does its job better than traditional media.

WS: Newspapers are moving advertisers online but they are getting much less than they were getting in the print form.
WOLFF: Yes, it’s a devastating blow to the media business that in general a dollar of advertising in traditional
outlets converts to a dime of advertising online. That is pretty brutal.

WS: What do readers on Newser.com look for, and what do they enjoy about the site?
WOLFF: Number one, what people increasingly look for online is a much broader news experience than they could have gotten offline, which is to say, you cannot be a well-informed consumer of news if you just read The New York Times. Now, you have to follow myriad number of sources, and what people are looking for are more efficient ways to do that. They are also looking for the ability to consume more news in less time. One of the things that we do is we not only aggregate news from hundreds of sources but we also summarize it. That speaks to the way people are consuming news in this new medium. It is an information experience, but not really a reading experience.  These are the kinds of things we are trying to speak to: the new news behavior.

WS: Are magazines going to fare better than newspapers?
WOLFF: That is a more complicated question because there are so many different kinds of magazines. There is really only one kind of newspaper—newspapers are for general audiences. Magazines tend not to be. Some magazines are highly targeted and deliver an experience for both readers and for advertisers that is not readily available in digital media. General interest magazines will go the way of newspapers. Time and Newsweek are in a very difficult predicament at this point in time. But I would certainly like to believe that there will always be monthly magazines. That is an experience that is not served up by the Internet. Obviously, I have a vested interest in monthly magazines so I should not be the authority on that. But I think that the fact that there are so many different kinds of magazines means that some will continue to find their reasonable business niche.