And now for our media bummer of the week: Even without a 2008-style meltdown, ad spending is already contracting.

Kantar Media says that U.S. ad spending grew 2.8 percent in Q2. That’s still growth, but it’s the smallest quarterly gain since the media business began crawling out of its post-Lehman hole.

In fact, it turns out that ad spending has been slowing since the second half of last year. Ad buys grew by 8.7 percent in Q3 2010, but have been shrinking since then.

Some sales guys I’ve talked with are still shrugging off the decline as the result of more difficult comps: It was a lot easier to post big year-over-year increases when the preceding year was the apocalypse.

And again, if you’re in digital ad sales and you don’t work for Yahoo or AOL, you’re probably not seeing any sign of a slowdown at all. And if you sell newspaper ads, you’re used to bad news because you haven’t really had good news in years.

But if things really do crater worldwide — and today doesn’t look like much fun at all — then all bets are off, no matter what you’re selling.

Matthew Kearney, whose title had been CEO of U.S. for MailOnline, the Daily Mail’s popular Web site, says he left the company voluntarily, because “I have completed my task.”

Kearney joined MailOnline last November as it was building out an American advertising and editorial team; he had previously run Screenvision, which sells ads in movie theaters.

The Web site’s business staff of 10 will now report to MailOnline publisher Martin Clarke, who splits time between London and New York, Kearney says.

“My task was to establish the online operations in the U.S., get its editorial offices up and running, and hire the commercial operations,” he says. Now, Kearney says, MailOnline’s U.S. team “doesn’t need a geographic senior management team. It just needs one general manager.”

Kearney’s description of his departure will surprise some of MailOnline’s U.S. staff, who believe he was let go this summer. I’ve asked MailOnline reps for comment but haven’t heard back yet.

Not up for dispute: MailOnline has had a huge and well-documented surge in popularity in recent years. That has been driven in part by coverage the site has generated from its Los Angeles bureau, and in part from American readers who go to the site, even if they’re unfamiliar with its British roots.

Comscore says American traffic to MailOnline has shot up from 10 million monthly uniques a year ago to 16 million last month. Worldwide, the site now generates 41 million uniques, and it is closing the gap on the New York Times, which has the globe’s most popular site, with 46 million uniques.

Kearney’s job was to sell the site to American advertisers, and to replace ads sold by networks with ones sold in-house. In June, Digiday reported that he was “close to landing several sponsors.”

Today we can see what newspaper publisher Knight Ridder thought about the future, way back in the early ’90s. Also accurate!

Except for an important part it got wrong.

Here’s a Knight Ridder-produced video from 1994, where the publisher imagines a world in which people consume their news on something very, very similar to an iPad. The tech specs kick in around the 2:20 mark (thanks very much, Richard Raucci):

Tablets will be a whole new class of computer. They’ll weigh under two pounds. They’ll be totally portable. They’ll have a clarity of screen display comparable to ink on paper. They’ll be able to blend text, audio, and graphics together. And they’ll be a part of our daily lives around the turn of the century. We may still use the computer to create information, but we’ll use the tablet to interact with information, reading, watching, listening.

Prescient, no? I don’t knock them for being about a decade early on tablet adoption. Can’t get everything.

If you slog through the video to about the 7:45 mark, though, you’ll find a much less accurate forecast. That’s the part where the newspaper publisher confidently explains that even when people have access to amazing tablet technology, they’ll still rely on newspapers, published in a format that looks very much like the print-and-ink product Knight Ridder was publishing in 1994.

Recall that while the open Web wasn’t mainstream back then — Netscape didn’t release its first browser until the end of the year — the notion of the “information superhighway,” with on-ramps courtesy of AOL and CompuServe, wasn’t new.

But Knight Ridder’s vision of the future assumed that newspapers stay dominant, and they stay looking like newspapers.

“Retaining that look and feel is very important, because people don’t buy generic news. They buy a specific newspaper, with a branded identity,” says the video’s narrator. “For most people, a newspaper is like a friend. It’s somebody you know, who you have come to trust,” adds a Knight Ridder executive, on camera.

And here you can see why the newspaper industry was so very slow to adapt to both the editorial and commercial impact of the Internet. It was smart enough to see the future coming over the hill, but not wise enough to realize it was going to run into it head-on — that technology wouldn’t just change the way information was delivered, but the source of information, and the value of that information.

Seventeen years later, it’s still trying to get its head around the idea.

In retrospect, it should have been easy to predict that Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t use an extended interview with Wall Street and the press to make any news today.

That’s because:

• Wall Street (or at least the portion of Wall Street that provides analyst coverage for News Corp.) seems wholly uninterested in the PhoneGate scandal. That didn’t change during today’s call: The only questions from the investor sector that had anything to do with phone hacking were some mild ones about Murdoch’s interest in selling off his newspaper business. No surprise: The media mogul who grew up in newspapers, loves newspapers and thinks newspapers have a bright future in the digital age said he has no interest in selling his newspapers.
• And if the U.K. Parliament and a pie-thrower couldn’t get Murdoch to say much last month, then how could the lowly press? Murdoch (who, as I note below as well, is ultimately my employer) was prepared for the PhoneGate questions he got from my fellow scribes: No, he wasn’t going anywhere soon, and if he did, COO Chase Carey would run the ship, he told a reporter who asked about James Murdoch’s chances to succeed his father. Yes, he was committed to “total transparency” when it came to making sure there were no other News of the World scandals brewing in his empire. But he didn’t want to say anything else about it. And no, his board of directors was not jam-packed with his cronies, he told a reporter who asked about that. It would be interesting, in a setting that allowed for follow-up questions, to follow up with some of those questions, but today’s format wasn’t going to allow that.

Meanwhile, the people whose opinion Murdoch really cares about — News Corp. investors — took a look at the company’s earnings and shrugged their shoulders, leaving the company’s shares more or less unchanged after hours. (During the day, News Corp. shares were slaughtered along with everyone else.) Perhaps they have other stuff on their minds these days.

—————

EARLIER:

You can read about News Corp. earnings (pretty good) here. But odds are that most of you want to hear what Rupert Murdoch has to say about PhoneGate and its fallout. Pretty sure you’ll get to hear a bit about it this afternoon.

For those of you who haven’t tuned in to News Corp. earnings calls before: Wall Street gets to tee off first, starting at 4:30 New York time. Then reporter types, some of whom may work for Murdoch, will get their shot around 5:15. I’ll be here for the duration (here is where I note that News Corp. owns this Web site). So come on in and take a load off.

4:33 pm: Welcome! Introductory remarks coming up. On the call: Murdoch, COO Chase Carey, CFO Dave DeVoe.

4:34 pm: Rupert, reading from script. Our financials this quarter were “exceptional.” Full year “very good.” Proud of team and *all* our businesses.

4:35 pm: That said, we have some “challenges” re: News of the World. “The kind of behavior that occured in that newsroom has no place in” our company. Also: “Make no mistake, Chase Carey and I run this company as a team” (i.e. I’m not going away any time soon).

4:37 pm: Joel Klein’s on the case, etc. “There can be no doubt about our commitment to ethics and integrity.”

4:37 pm: And like we said before, PhoneGate has nothing to do with the rest of the company.

4:37 pm: “Our position is strong, and our future is promising.”

4:38 pm: Bummed about the BSkyB deal, though.

4:38 pm: Now that we have all that extra cash on hand, though, we’ll think hard about what to do with it. “Re-examining our near and long-term opportunities” on top of that $5B stock buyback we announced.

Now here’s DeVoe, reading from script. Will tune out on most of this, but if you’re into it, again, you can see it here.

4:42 pm: Scanning Twitter, I see that the FT’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson pronounces Murdoch’s script reading to be “forceful.” Agreed! Much more at ease than when he was sitting in front of Parliament this month. Then again, no cameras, or pie.

4:45 pm: Speaking of Twitter, my stream has a whole lot less Murdoch-chatter than we saw last month during his UK appearance.

4:46 pm: Myspace generated $230 million in operating losses over the last year. Amazing. That’s separate from the $254 million writedown the company took (I believe).

4:48 pm: The money News Corp. won’t lose from Myspace next year will be offset, in large part, by the money it won’t see from News of the World.

4:49 pm: And here’s Carey, who wants to talk about “operating priorities” and balance sheet plans.

4:50 pm: Hey, look at that! Chase Carey stressing digital distribution. That’s a new one.

4:51 pm: Even *more* digital talk from Carey. Very unusual. Talking about the eight-day window/authentication plan it just rolled out for Fox.com and Hulu. Promises “many more” digital plans.

Also! Will be vigilant about programs that threaten our product, like $1 rentals. (Did I just hear that correctly? Would mean that Apple deal is over, if so.)

Q&A Time:

4:55 pm: Analyst wants to know cable TV pricing, wonders if company won’t be able to raise affiliate (and eventually your) prices.

Not a problem, says Carey. More growth coming next year in U.S., and then lots coming internationally. “We feel very good” about cable in general. It’s matured, and the economy is rough, “but the demand for this bundle out there in the United States continues to be, you know, strong.”

As Chase talks up cable business and TV business, Rupert chimes in to talk up ratings.

4:59 pm: Q: Your ad dollars looked much stronger than other people’s. What’s up with that?

Carey: Advertising is good because our ratings are good. American Idol, Fox News, etc. Looking forward, national business is great. Figures broadcast ads flat for next year, cable up a lot. Local business “not as robust” as national. “Looks like it will be a better for us in September.” That is, he’s not allowing that the whole possible economic collapse thing might chip away at the ad biz.

Q: For Rupert: August 2008, you were asked about buying back stock, and it was much cheaper then than it is now, and you didn’t want to do it. So why are you buying back shares now?

Rupert: “It’s a question of relative values.” In 2008, I was “coy about it, and of course I couldn’t say so openly” because we were saving for our giant BSkyB bid.

[Missed q, sorry]

5:04 pm: How’s the local TV business doing? Also, with the new eight-day delay “authentication” deal, do you have those in place with most distributors (so far just Dish announced) and aren’t you losing some eyeballs by doing it piecemeal?

5:06 pm: Missed first part of answer. On authentication, Carey is explaining justification for the plan, but not answering Q, which is about how many of these deals he has done, and what rolling them out piecemeal does for this business.

“I’m not going to get too deep into all our negotiations” but this will become standard for our deals.

Carey still explaining why authentication isn’t bad. “We think it’s a really great experience.” But yeah, in short term, may be some “sacrifice” by not chasing a quick buck.

Q: On Fox Biz. WTF happened to that? “You don’t even mention it as an undermonetized asset.”

Rupert: We’re doing okay. Sometimes during the day we beat CNBC. We’re at cash break-even. We need more distribution, though.

Carey: “I could have put it on the list” of assets we like. I just didn’t include everything. Don’t read anything into it. “We think this channel really is an exciting growth area for us as well.”

Q: Boring question about print operations in Australia. Skipping.

Rupert still talking about Australian print newspapers. It’s his roots, after all.

5:14 pm: For Carey: Are your return on capital projections reasonable?

Carey: Yup.

5:15 pm: And here I’ll just note that there have been zero questions from Wall Street about PhoneGate so far. That’s not a surprise — Wall Street buys the argument that PhoneGate has nothing to do with most of News Corp.’s biz — but figured someone might want to toss them a lay-up.

5:16 pm: Q for Rupe: We’ve asked you about spinning of newspapers before. What about now?

“I’m feeling very confident” about newspapers. “Shocked and appalled” about NOTW, but that was a “tiny corner.” Everything else good, WSJ doing great.

5:18 pm: Sorry, missed this one again. About writedowns in TV. Also, a question about operating income for film business. Rupert says it’s a “very very dangerous thing” to predict movie biz.

5:20 pm: DeVoe (I think) goes back to the buyback question, says buying back stock makes more sense now because “we’re in an entirely different place today.”

5:21 pm: Are you factoring in NOTW closing costs into your guidance?

Murdoch: Nope. “First we have to get to the bottom, exactly, of what happened. Were there a dozen guilty people, or were there two dozen?”

5:23 pm: One last Wall Street questions: Will you consider more structural changes at company? If not, why not?

Rupert: “I think we’ve got a very good mix.” We’ve got one or two … things we would sell, “but no major restructuring.” Chase: Right. What he said.

Rupe on digital: “We’ve learned a tremendous amount.” Have good people working digital now — our newspaper apps are great. “That will expand, and the money from that will expand as more people have tablets, and what is interesting is we’re getting tremendous takeup [?], not just from the iPad, but on the Kindle.”

Time for press questions. Do your best/worst, fellow wretches.

Q: Recently you said you wanted your kids to run the company. Do you think BOD will still support James running the company in the near future?

Rupe: “I hope the job won’t be open in the near future” [much laughter] … but “I have full confidence in James.”

And now my line is dead. Bear with me as I try an alternate route …

5:29 pm: Sorry, missed at least one there, back. Appears to have been about Hulu, and it appears to have been a non-answer from Carey. But I’ll backfill if I can.

5:30 pm: For Rupert: What are you doing to look at the rest of the business to prevent NOTW-style scandals?

Rupert: “We’re absolutely committed to total transparency” throughout the company but don’t want to get into it.

Yikes. One last question. Superfast Q&A: You said board said it makes sense for you to stay as CEO and chairman. But everyone says your board is not really independent.

5:32 pm: Murdoch cuts him off. “That’s not true.” Viet Dinh is a “completely independent” director. “We are in compliance with good governance.”

Annnnnnnnnnd that deflated balloon sound you hear are the sighs of my fellow media watchers, who got nothing of value from Murdoch today.

Going to sign off for now, thanks for listening/watching.

This morning, News Corp. CEO and majordomo Rupert Murdoch, his son James (who is also a top company exec) — as well as former employee and full-time lightning rod Rebekah Brooks — march on down to the British Parliament to answer questions from a committee there about the ever-growing PhoneGate scandal.

For those living under a rock, News Corp. is embroiled in ever more serious controversy about who knew what and when (also where, why and how much) in the hacking of phones of a myriad of well-known people in the U.K. by its News of the World tabloid newspaper.

Besides celebrities and politicians, that has included the voicemails of a murdered girl, an appalling act that has galvanized public opinion and the weak spines of legislators into action in this inquiry.

It’s sordid, it’s ugly and it makes for what could be an explosive event, starring the man who brought you “Titanic,” Glenn Beck, “Glee” and, most recently, the sale of Myspace.

There’s no question, getting the 80-year-old Murdoch on the ropes will be the aim of the committee members holding the hearing, and how one of the world’s most famous and legendary media moguls performs — or does not — will be a big deal to both interested observers and News Corp. shareholders.

By way of full disclosure, that’s not me, but this site is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. In other words, somewhere up the corporate food chain, Murdoch is my boss.

In any case, that has never stopped me or AllThingsD.com from telling it like it is, so here is the liveblog of what is sure to be a doozy of a media event:

6:36 am PT:: It all starts for the Murdochs, as soon as the former Scotland Yard head John Yates has completed questioning about the police’s obvious bungling of the various investigations over the years.

Rupert Murdoch and his son, James Murdoch, are on, looking grave and dressed in grey.

Sitting behind them are Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, and his top adviser at News Corp., Joel Klein, who is heading up the phone hacking scandal internally at the company.

The hearing — in a room that looks like a high school debate could take place there — starts off politely enough.

But the first question is directed toward James Murdoch about his clearly incomplete investigation when phone hacking allegations were first made many years ago. He begins with an apology.

“These actions do not live up to the standards of News Corp.,” says the younger Murdoch.

He is interrupted by his father, Rupert Murdoch, who notes rather dramatically: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

The questioner quickly asks the obvious query, after James Murdoch claims News Corp. was not in full possession of the facts when execs had told a previous committee there was no reason to believe there was more widespread hacking.

Were News Corp. execs lying?

James Murdoch continues to insist that the bulk of evidence came out — “real evidence” — in later civil trials. And also, that News Corp. is now investigating the situation fully.

He throws around words like “proactive action” and “transparency,” which is probably cold comfort now to those hacked when things were less clear to News Corp.’s senior management.

Now up, Rupert Murdoch, who is asked quickly about statements he made about not tolerating wrongdoing and who had lied to him at News Corp. about the phone hacking.

Apparently, he “didn’t know” a lot about the hacking that took place, while also defending the non-hacking employees of his company.

But the questioner is still on him about exactly what he did know about the situation, which seems to be — at least according to his testimony — a lot of I-don’t-knows.

6:53 am: It continues about what Rupert Murdoch knew and when he knew it and what he did. Or not.

As Rupert Murdoch keeps up with this tone of not being clued in to what have turned out to be critical events, James Murdoch wants to keep jumping in with the details, which he is eager to impart.

“At what point did you find out criminality was endemic at News of the World?” asks the questioner.

Rupert Murdoch does not like the word endemic, but stresses that he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed” by the case of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler.

The questioner seems frustrated by Rupert Murdoch’s answers, which are, for the typically razor-sharp media mogul, unusually slow.

Like a persistent terrier who wants to perform, James Murdoch is back again offering to serve up the deets.

7:04 am: Now, it is onto the closing down of News of the World: Was the tabloid shut down because of the criminality?

“We had broken our trust with our readers,” says Rupert Murdoch. “We felt ashamed for what had happened.”

A new questioner is on, with a bizarre query about why Rupert Murdoch came in the back door of the Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street on a recent visit there.

It’s a cloddish effort to show him as a powerful puppetmaster to pols, but only serves as a punch line.

Back on track, with questions about whether there was hacking in the U.S., which Rupert Murdoch said he could not believe had happened.

More questions about how badly the company acted, which came down to the questions about whether he was “ultimately” responsible for the hacking.

“Nope,” says Rupert Murdoch, who keeps insisting he relied on others, some of whom apparently “misled” him.

It’s an astonishing admission and, really, excuse, given he has been chairman, CEO and a very strong leader of News Corp. for more than a half-century.

7:16 am: A new questioner, who asks who decided to close down News of the World. It was Murdoch himself, his son and other execs.

Next up, why did News Corp. pay off a victim of hacking, which James Murdoch did without informing his father or the News Corp. board.

James Murdoch essentially points out that it is typical to do this in companies of the global scale of News Corp.

These are apparently very busy, busy, busy people, who do not seem to have time to notice how such juicy and best-selling scoops might have been magically produced by News of the World.

Onto ethical conduct guidelines, which News Corp. has in a pamphlet form, says James Murdoch, but pages which some at the company have obviously never cracked.

Rupert Murdoch is asked again about his culpability in the case, which he continues to maintain he does not shoulder the blame.

James Murdoch does note that the company “will think more forcefully … about our journalism and ethics.”

Given the situation, in which every day brings a new revelation of bad acts by News Corp. employees, this promise of better behavior seems to be a case of much too little and very, very late.

Rupert Murdoch still uses the opportunity to stress the need for a free press, despite its excesses.

7:31 am: More about the payments to settle with phone hacking victims and how soon the company realized the problems were more widespread.

James Murdoch talks about how he might have acted differently had he known more then as he does now.

“If we knew now what we knew then,” says James Murdoch, “we would have taken more action and moved more aggressively.”

But what else is he going to say? It’s a could-have, would-have, should-have line of questioning that is eliciting very little in the way of true information.

Finally, a good point about “willful blindness,” which is a term from the Enron scandal about avoiding knowing about problems you really should have known about.

“Is that a question?,” asks James Murdoch. It is a statement, actually, and a decent enough one.

“We didn’t do that,” says Rupert Murdoch firmly this time.

Still, soon enough, Rupert Murdoch is insisting he was not as involved as people have imagined him to be with the management of his newspapers.

A new questioner is pressing this important point, but Rupert Murdoch is not biting on a query about his legendarily hands-on managing style.

“I’d say, ‘What’s doing?’” he explains about his conversations with editors, but adding he might not have been told about payoffs to phone hacking victims.

The questions are in the deep weeds here, but it’s still interesting that Rupert Murdoch continues to maintain that his life was too busy to wallow in the details, however controversial and important those details might be.

7:55 am: More and more don’t-knows pile up and up in a giant mountain of acts perpetrated by someone somewhere, but not the Murdochs.

“I can tell you I was surprised as you were,” says James Murdoch about certain payments to various hackers and those who were hacked.

Was it Les Hinton, who then ran News International and later Dow Jones, from which he recently resigned?

Could be! Maybe! Mistake were made! Who knows!

Well, someone does!

It moves onto Brooks, the tarnished News International exec and editor whom Rupert Murdoch does note he still trusts. Finally, some certainty!

Brooks is definitely one of the more compelling characters in this drama, although the media focus on her striking red hair color seems odd and vaguely sexist, as if she is some flame-haired she-devil from media hell. She might certainly be guilty in this mess, but her fabulous hair has nothing to do with it.

(Rupert’s mane is grey, by the way, and James’ is brown, if you really need to know.)

Fascinatingly, Murdoch’s backing of Brooks has been strong and consistent, despite intense criticism of her by many in this scandal.

The payment of legal fees of perpetrators and payments to the victims in the hacking seems to obsess one questioner, who wants News Corp. to stop doing it.

Murdoch says he’d like to if contracts did not preclude that, which essentially means News Corp. will keep up forking over the legal fees and payments.

8:12 am: The attention turns to how James Murdoch found out about the various emails that showed there was more evidence of hacking than was first thought about and what he felt about it.

He says very little, noting that the matter is under police investigation. It’s not don’t-know now, but can’t-say.

The hearing is beginning to feel a little rope-a-dope, with the Murdochs apologizing and taking blows, saying very little — either claiming lack of knowledge or lack of ability to comment about the ongoing police inquiry — and tiring out the questioners.

It is a classic tactic of the boxing champion Muhammad Ali and it works in the ring.

Whether that will be the case with PhoneGate remains to be seen, but it certainly has made what could have been a more explosive hearing much less so.

Instead, it seems to have turned into a what didn’t the Murdochs know and when didn’t they know it hearing.

On questioner gets this irony. “That’s frankly unsatisfactory,” he says about the Murdochs continuing shock and surprise at the thorny situation they find themselves in.

Maybe it seems a little hard to believe, but the persistent story from James Murdoch is that they were told by their lawyers, the police and others that nothing was awry once the initial phone hacking investigation was complete and only found out about the larger problem in later civil lawsuits.

But, asks the questioner to Rupert Murdoch, should his editors and managers at News of the World have known about it?

Of course, they should have.

But, once again, the legendary media baron, who made his fortune and fame in disseminating news and information across the world in newspapers, on television, on satellite and on the Web — at least for now — can’t say.

So, was he “kept in the dark” about the situation? Rupert Murdoch acknowledges he might have asked more questions, although he noted his British newspapers were only a small part of his massive empire.

But, he adds, “Anything that is seen as a crisis comes to me.”

Well, not the phone hacking crisis, it seems.

But, they’re sorry. So sorry. And, of course, humbled.

8:54 am: Suddenly, there is a disturbance, in which someone seems to have possibly attempted to accost the Murdochs.

But it is not clear what has happened, as the hearings are suspended for 10 minutes.

James Murdoch leaps up quickly to protect his father, which he has been doing in this hearing verbally already, where the strategy seems to be to let him largely do all the talking.

Even faster on her feet and with arms raised toward a man in a plaid shirt and carrying a pie plate with shaving cream is Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi.

The man seems to have managed to get some of the foam on Rupert Murdoch, but Wendi Deng appears to have partially thwarted her husband from receiving a full pie in the face.

It’s the first striking visual of this hearing, protecting the patriarch and the king of the empire from harm, no matter what.

Here is a video of the incident:

According to Britain’s Channel 4: “As the man was being led away in handcuffs escorted by a single police officer, he refused to give his name, saying: ‘As Mr Murdoch himself said, I’m afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation.’”

9:09 am: The room is cleared, so it is only the Murdoch crew behind James and Rupert Murdoch, and now the committee is even more solicitous.

Rupert Murdoch is without his jacket and his wife is being commended for her most excellent left hook.

Still, it’s back to business and the questioner does zero in on a major disconnect over how two media execs as famously aggressive and involved as the Murdochs were so passive in this hacking situation.

It “was a terrible shock,” says James Murdoch.

The same is said about what would be even more disturbing and recent allegations of the hacking of the victims of the 9/11 bombings.

Both father and son say there is no evidence of this so far, but they were surely looking into it.

While it certainly did not come through in what have largely been feckless questions from the committee, the final questioner does correctly ask the pair if they might want to pay more attention.

The last question is for Rupert Murdoch and finally gets to the real query everyone wants to ask.

Noting Murdoch is “captain of the ship,” she asks if he has considered resigning.

“No,” answers Murdoch firmly.

“Why not?” she presses.

“People let me down and it’s for them to pay,” says Rupert Murdoch. “But I think, frankly, I am the best person do clean this up.”

He finishes up with a statement about being sorry, how he was also betrayed and how phone hacking and bribery is wrong.

“Saying sorry is not enough, things must be put right,” he says.

Finally, something we do know.

The company said this Sunday’s edition of News of the World will be the last for the 168-year-old paper.

James Murdoch, News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer, said in a statement that the newspaper’s reputation has been “sullied by behavior that was wrong.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

While I was in Los Angeles recently, I was invited to a private screening of a documentary about the New York Times called “Page One: Inside the New York Times.”

The film, which debuted at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, opens Friday.

The documentary is by Andrew Rossi, who spent a year following reporters and editors at the famed newspaper, even as the media landscape shifted dramatically due to the impact of digital technologies.

Luckily for me, one of the movie’s principal characters — and I do mean character when it comes to him — is the Times’ quirky media columnist, David Carr.

I met Carr a dog’s age ago, when he ran “The City Paper” in Washington, D.C. He has only gotten more interesting over time, especially as the Web has transformed the news business.

Actually, wrecked the news business seems more the sensibility of “Page One” and also the audience at the screening, which largely bemoaned the troubles that quality papers have gotten themselves into in the age of the Internet.

Of course, the situation at the Times is a lot more complicated than that and there are some significant benefits to readers in the new paradigm, even if it did not help traditional media.

Carr winks and nods to both sides of the debate in the film — his attack on Web bad boy Michael Wolff over aggregation is priceless, even though he clearly loves the Internet’s thrilling possibilities, too.

As I have previously written, what is probably most interesting is that many of the stories covered by the Times in the film are about the technological forces that have put it and other traditional media organizations through the digital ringer in recent years.

Here’s the video of my interview with Carr — please, as I tried to, ignore his rant at the start about the Times’ failed talent raid on a defenseless little tech blog site! — as well as an exclusive clip and the trailer for the movie:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110615/ready-for-his-close-up-the-nyts-media-dude-david-carr-talks-about-page-one/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110519/amazon-reaches-the-e-book-tipping-point-kindle-sales-blow-by-print/ http://allthingsd.com/20110519/amazon-reaches-the-e-book-tipping-point-kindle-sales-blow-by-print/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 13:36:54 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=33009 Hard to believe that just a few years ago, e-books were still a novelty item. Now Amazon is selling more e-book titles than print combined.

Amazon says that since April, it has been selling 105 Kindle titles for every 100 print copies it moves. Reminder: Amazon only started selling Kindle e-readers in November 2007.

In the past, we’ve seen similar numbers from Jeff Bezos and company, but they’ve always come with caveats–Amazon was only talking about hardcovers, or softcovers, etc. Now Amazon wants to be clear–it’s comparing apples to apples (and not counting free e-book titles, which are very popular on the site).

Amazon still hasn’t released sales numbers on actual Kindle units, but today we can give the company a pass on its non-disclosure, and just let it soak up the plaudits it deserves for moving its flagship business from physical to digital in less than four years. (Pay attention, newspaper, TV, movie, and music executives!)

From Amazon’s release:

• Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
• So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
• In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
• Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
• Less than one year after introducing the U.K. Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110519/amazon-reaches-the-e-book-tipping-point-kindle-sales-blow-by-print/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110407/the-daily-will-release-subscriber-numbers-some-day-thats-not-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20110407/the-daily-will-release-subscriber-numbers-some-day-thats-not-today/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:43:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31536 News Corp.’s Daily tablet newspaper had a high-profile launch in February, but didn’t start charging customers until two weeks ago. So how’s it selling? “We’re happy with where we are,” publisher Greg Clayman told the Ad Age Digital conference today. What about that study showing a marked decline in social media sharing from the iPad app since it started charging? Some deadpan from Clayman: “When we started charging, we didn’t have 100 percent conversion.” (News Corp. also owns this [free] Web site).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110407/the-daily-will-release-subscriber-numbers-some-day-thats-not-today/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110324/brill-crovitz-sell-newspaper-paywall-operator-journalism-online-to-rr-donnelley/ http://allthingsd.com/20110324/brill-crovitz-sell-newspaper-paywall-operator-journalism-online-to-rr-donnelley/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:11:07 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31141 Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz have sold Journalism Online, the newspaper paywall company they founded in 2009, to Chicago-based printing company RR Donnelley. Terms haven’t been disclosed. Journalism Online is supposed to help print publishers operate online subscription services, and to date it has publicly launched with a handful of smaller publishers. News Corp., which also publishes this site, bought a stake in the company last year and is selling it to RR Donnelley as part of  the deal; News Corp. says its investment has appreciated “considerably.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110324/brill-crovitz-sell-newspaper-paywall-operator-journalism-online-to-rr-donnelley/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/apples-subscription-service-works-just-fine-unless-youre-a-publisher-hoping-it-wont/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/apples-subscription-service-works-just-fine-unless-youre-a-publisher-hoping-it-wont/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:00:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=31034 Publishers aren’t happy about the terms of Apple’s new iTunes subscription system , but I have a hunch we’re going to see more of them biting the bullet and using it anyway. Just like the New York Times says it will do later this summer.

One argument I’ve heard from media companies that are considering using the plan: Just because consumers can buy subscriptions from iTunes doesn’t mean they will.

They can also buy the subscriptions for iPad/iPhone app content from the media companies’ own sites, and when that happens the publishers will keep all the revenue and all the subscriber data. (When Apple sells a subscription, it collects a 30 percent fee every month, and limits the subscriber info the publishers can see.)

So the media guys are hoping that they’ll sell most of their subscriptions themselves, and that Apple’s sales channel will be relatively small.

Good luck!

I just went through the subscription signup for The Daily, the tablet newspaper from News Corp., which also owns this Web site. The Daily has had a rocky launch, but handing them $0.99 a week using Apple’s new service was silky smooth.

It wasn’t technically a one-click purchase–there was also a confirmation button, and an opt-in screen where I agreed to hand over my e-mail account and zip code to the publisher. But then I was done.

No need to give Apple my credit card info. They’ve already got it, along with 200 million other iTunes users’ data.

Then I got this confirmation e-mail from Apple. Note how it’s written in plain English, and spells out exactly what I’ve gotten myself into, and how I can get out of it. (Click on image to enlarge).

That’s as frictionless, and transparent, as e-commerce can get.

And while I understand, as a media reporter, why the publishers want me to buy through them, as a consumer, I don’t care. The only way to stop me from taking the path of least resistance would be to shut it off altogether. And walking away from 200 million customers is going to take an awful lot of willpower.

[Postscript from 3/27: Just unsubcribed from The Daily. That was easy, too: Did it within iTunes, in just a couple clicks.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/apples-subscription-service-works-just-fine-unless-youre-a-publisher-hoping-it-wont/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110309/former-doubleclick-execs-create-groupon-competitor-but-its-not-exactly-a-clone/ http://allthingsd.com/20110309/former-doubleclick-execs-create-groupon-competitor-but-its-not-exactly-a-clone/#comments Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:00:11 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3394 Think there’s already too many Groupon clones?

Think again.

New York-based Group Commerce, which is coming out of stealth today, has the funding and the pedigree to be a viable contender.

Founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt, and Andrew Glenn, has raised $8 million in capital.

Investors include: Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, and Bob Pittman, the founder of MTV Networks and now chairman of media and entertainment platforms at Clear Channel.

What’s more, it is coming out of the gate running with four major publishers added to its platform: DailyCandy, Meredith Corporation, Thrillist and The New York Times.

In an exclusive interview with eMoney, Rosenblatt and Kelt explain that unlike Groupon or LivingSocial, Group Commerce is not building its own consumer brand, and won’t be targeting deals directly at consumers. Rather, it’s banking on building a platform that other media companies can leverage.

Rosenblatt, who was the former CEO of DoubleClick, is the company’s chairman, Kelt is CEO, and Glenn is the company’s CTO. All three were at DoubleClick when it was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion

Ironically, they are now building a business that Google desperately wants to get into, but failed after an unsuccessful $6 billion bid to acquire Groupon.

Rosenblatt said:

“Of course, this is going to be a very big market, and there will be many more players than just two. Each participant will have a different approach. Google clearly has one, but we believe collectively that publishers have the strongest advantage. They have the audience and the brand loyalty, but they are missing the mechanics and industry expertise.”

The daily deals space is getting exceedingly crowded.

The market is expected to soar to as much as $3.9 billion in the next four years, and there’s roughly 200 players in the space, according to estimates by BIA/Kelsey.

Rosenblatt compared the market to the early days of online advertising when AOL and Yahoo dominated.

“In the early days of the display market, a big share of the market was dominated by two players, but overtime advertising was redistributed to where the audience was. Groupon and LivingSocial have done a great job creating a market, and they will continue to be very large, but there will be a similar redistribution in favor of publishers,” he said.

Beyond Groupon and LivingSocial, which are considered the market leaders, there’s other companies attacking several niches, ranging from furniture to baby apparel, travel and families. There’s also companies that say they offer exactly what Group Commerce is describing–a white label solution for publishers–including Seattle-based Tippr and ReachLocal, which recently acquired DealOn.

“There’s a huge number of Groupon clones,” Rosenblatt said. “The insight here is that none of those clones have established publishers, they don’t have brands or trusted relationships, or customer lists….We don’t have a b2c business, but that is the case with most of the other white label providers. They also don’t have teams and our breadth of services.”

He says the three components that you must have in order to be successful in the space are: A loyal audience; great content and deals; and a technology platform.

“The publishers we’ve worked with for many years [at DoubleClick] are in the process of transitioning to a new digital economy,” Rosenblatt said. “They have an audience and the ability to match the audience to deals that are contextually relevant. Our role is to offer the third part.”

Group Commerce is not just offering a technology platform, but also is sourcing the deals for its media partners, and finding a large audience and wide range of demographics for the merchants across publications.

Daily deals typically offer discounts at restaurants or other services for as much as 50 to 70 percent off. The customer pays for the voucher up front and then redeems it later. Typically, the merchant only gets half of that cash, while the other half goes to Groupon or another provider. For the merchant it’s a new form of advertising, replacing traditional methods, like Yellow Pages or newspaper ads.

Group Commerce would not disclose its revenue splits, but said it is paid with a portion of gross revenue of each deal, and that it’s a shared risk model. “If the deals don’t work, we don’t get paid,” Kelt said.

Kelt added that they believe their model will work because it combines the publisher’s knowledge of the audience with the merchants. For instance, DailyCandy’s audience is young and female, and a reader may be interested in an offer for a ladies night out at an upscale restaurant.

Although a potential customer does not have necessarily have to be a publisher, Kelt notes. It can be anyone with an audience, including a celebrity with a large following on Twitter.

Today, Group Commerce has 35 employees in New York, Chicago, Florida, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s planning to grow to 100 employees by the end of the year with the majority being sales people.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110309/former-doubleclick-execs-create-groupon-competitor-but-its-not-exactly-a-clone/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110307/aol-deal-closes-today-as-more-high-profile-huffington-post-journalism-hires-signal-new-direction/ http://allthingsd.com/20110307/aol-deal-closes-today-as-more-high-profile-huffington-post-journalism-hires-signal-new-direction/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:01:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41315 AOL will officially close its $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post today, according to several sources close to the situation.

The culmination of the deal–which has already been approved by regulators–is set to be announced by the New York-based company this morning, only one month after it was struck.

And–in a clear sign of the shift in its focus toward a more editorially driven direction under the now-official content head Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–sources said the closing will be accompanied by the announcement of the hiring of a half-dozen journalists to AOL’s new Huffington Post Media Group unit.

Among the new reporters are some more high-profile grabs from other media giants, including The Daily’s Jon Ward. He has been the Washington bureau chief for New Corp.’s high-profile online newspaper, which only recently launched.

Also set to join AOL is Yahoo’s senior media writer Michael Calderone.

Interestingly, along with more experienced editorial staff, sources said the announcement will also include new hires via the Huffington Post’s Jefferson Program for Young Journalists.

Sources said the new hires are only the beginning of a series of them, as the impact of the leadership of Huffington becomes clearer.

Along with the news and opinion site, the well-known media personality is now in charge of all of AOL’s varied content properties, including its locally aimed Patch.

Huffington, with obviously strong support from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, has been talking a lot in a plethora of interviews since the deal was announced a few weeks ago about the importance of creating a new media organization focused on original reporting.

In a way, AOL is now competing with big news sites such as those on Yahoo, as well as smaller niche content and also mainstream entities.

Even before the deal was struck with AOL, the Huffington Post had been heading down that path of pulling in mainstream journalists. Last year, it hired former New York Times economics writer Peter Goodman and former Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, among others.

The formula? Adding the strong journalism reputation of these reporters to the eclectic mix of socializing, blogging, celebritizing and aggressive aggregating that the site has used to garner huge amounts of traffic in recent years.

As I had previously written, the AOL Way–the same for a strategy document about content on the site–is now the Arianna Way.

Here are Huffington and Armstrong talking about such issues in in an exclusive video interview BoomTown did with them just before they announced the deal on Super Bowl Sunday about a month ago:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/aol-deal-closes-today-as-more-high-profile-huffington-post-journalism-hires-signal-new-direction/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110307/plastic-surgeon-figures-in-google-face-off-in-spain/ http://allthingsd.com/20110307/plastic-surgeon-figures-in-google-face-off-in-spain/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 08:00:39 +0000 Paul Sonne, Max Colchester and David Roman http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37321 In 1991, the Spanish newspaper El País published an article centered on a dispute between Madrid plastic surgeon Hugo Guidotti Russo and one of his patients over an allegedly botched breast surgery. The headline: “The Risk of Wanting to Be Slim.”

Nearly 20 years later, Dr. Guidotti Russo, backed by Spain’s privacy regulator, contends that the tale of the dispute is personal information and wants to purge the article from Google, where it shows up on the first page of results when his name is searched.
His complaint accounts for one of about 80 instances in which the Spanish regulator has told U.S.-based Google Inc. to remove personal information about individuals from its search results.

Google says it plans to challenge most of those orders, arguing that the agency is overstepping its authority.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110307/plastic-surgeon-figures-in-google-face-off-in-spain/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110302/new-york-times-launching-giltgroupon-clone-this-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20110302/new-york-times-launching-giltgroupon-clone-this-month/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:02:22 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=30364 This one was inevitable: The New York Times is readying its own Groupon-like e-commerce offering, which will launch at the end of this month.

To be technical about it, TimesLimited is really more of a Gilt City clone. Like that site, a spin-off from the Gilt Groupe private sale juggernaut, TimesLimited offers won’t require a minimum number of buyers for any particular offer, but the offers will be limited to a certain time limit.

But big picture is that the Times is trying to hop on the group-buying craze that everyone else wants a piece of. And there’s no reason they shouldn’t: The paper already has the crucial assets you need to make these things work — an ad sales force and a pool of potential customers.

The latter will come from current Times subscribers, as well as registered users of the paper’s Web site. But ad sales chief Denise Warren says the service will be available to anyone who wants to opt in.

What kind of stuff will the Times be selling? “We’re going for a more experienced-based version, more of a curated, upscale offer,” Warren says, without getting specific. But based on the art the Times is using to illustrate its landing page, TimesLimited will appeal to people who like sail boats, lamb chops, and expensive-looking dresses.

And how will TimesLimited be tied into the paper’s move to put up a pay wall, which it it says will launch “shortly”? It won’t, Warren says.

(Thanks to Google’s Chris Messina for spotting.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110302/new-york-times-launching-giltgroupon-clone-this-month/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110218/breaking-down-the-platform-walls/ http://allthingsd.com/20110218/breaking-down-the-platform-walls/#comments Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:56:39 +0000 Sam Shrauger http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=36565 This week, the tech world is buzzing about a broadening competition between Apple and Google after both companies announced payment systems for digital content within the span of two days. But both Apple and Google are missing the point. Neither of them will become the successor to the newspaper because a single platform doesn’t benefit either the publishers or their consumers.

Publishers need an easy way to monetize their content while retaining info about their readers and consumers need a convenient way to pay for their news. Why should you have to buy your copy of your favorite newspaper once to read it on your Google Android phone and again to read it on your Apple iPad? That’s ridiculous.

Whether subscription-based or on a singular basis, walling off content within the confines of one device or operating system limits publishers’ reach and stifles their readers’ demand. Publishers are simply looking for ways to monetize digital content, and they’ve told us over and over that they don’t care which platform or device their customers read it on. The most open solution will win in the end because it leaves that decision to the consumer.

A more open approach to digital goods payments–breaking down the platform walls–benefits both publishers and consumers. Consumers retain the freedom to read articles on whatever device most suits them at that particular moment, while publishers don’t have to give up one of the key insights they use to sell advertising: the details on who is reading their news content.

Whenever walled gardens have come up against the open web, the open web has won out. Just look at AOL. They were synonymous with the Internet in the early 1990s but they restricted their users. Do you know anyone who still has an AOL account? It’s the same thing now. When it comes to selling digital content, a payment system that works easily across platforms just makes sense for both the publishers and their readers. It’s not that readers won’t pay. They just won’t pay if it’s too difficult or too restrictive. While this week’s news has been exciting to watch, the real issue is how to make paying for digital content easy and safe for consumers and profitable for publishers.

At PayPal, we think we’ve come up with a good solution that does just that–and over time, if history repeats itself, I think we’ll see that the open web, rather than walled gardens, will prevail. Whatever happens though, the era of the newspaper in its current form has come to a close.

Sam Shrauger is vice president of global product and experience at PayPal and is responsible for product strategy and management, as well as user experience design.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110218/breaking-down-the-platform-walls/feed/ 0