Rupert Murdoch – to succeed, you have to fail

Jim Marshall says love him or hate him, Rupert Murdoch is probably the world’s most innovative and progressive media man. Who knows whether The Daily will prove to be a success or not but interactive newspapers will develop as a result of Murdoch’s risk – giving him (quite rightly) significant influence and ownership of the market…

At a time when much of the news (both media and world news) is being dominated by youth – from Social Media, the story/film of Facebook, through to the uprising in Egypt – it’s rather encouraging for us members of the slightly older generation (in my case, I emphasise ‘slightly’) that a real ‘oldie’, namely Rupert Murdoch, is still proving to be probably the world’s most innovative and progressive media man.

Last week he launched The Daily, which is the first bespoke newspaper available only on the iPad. I’m not sure this quite heralds the revolution in newspaper publishing, or the beginning of the end of traditional newspapers, that some commentators are suggesting.

However, it is definitely the start of a new era for the industry and it’s remarkable that Mr Murdoch is still driving change in the industry some 50 years after he revolutionised UK newspaper publishing with the purchases of the News of the World, the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.

And it’s not as though he’s been recently inactive in other parts of his media empire – his ambition to take majority control of BSkyB is subject to an OFT enquiry and has already caused more than a little embarrassment to such public luminaries as Vince Cable (cabinet minister) and Mark Thompson (BBC director general).

Additionally of course there is the ongoing scandal involving ‘phone tapping’ by the News of the World. Love him or hate him, he was undoubtedly the 20th century’s most influential media magnate and, to date at least, the same is arguably true of the 21st century.

So will his latest venture be successful and even start the ‘reinvention of newspapers for the digital age’?

The media journalist, Alasdair Reid, wrote in Campaign: “No-one has a better record than Murdoch when it comes to seeing around corners.” Alasdair is a lovely man (in spite of being an Arsenal fan), is of my generation (i.e. slightly older) and usually makes very good sense. But on this (rare) occasion, I’m not sure whether I agree with him.

In fact Murdoch’s career has been nearly as much characterised by his high profile mistakes and failures as by his successes. For example, in newspapers, his recently costly foray into the free London market with thelondonpaper, his ill fated move into mid-market sector with his purchase and subsequent closure of the Today newspaper in the 1990’s, his initial reluctance ‘to go colour’ in the Sun and his long, hugely costly and consistently unsuccessful battle to overtake the Daily Telegraph with the Times.

Outside of print, he has also showed a distinct ‘lack of vision’ on occasions – British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was much smarter than Sky in identifying that subscription was going to be the future funding model (the original Amstrad satellite receivers for Sky were designed with no provision for pay per view or subscription services). BSB also had a better programming strategy having identified sport as being a potential driver of take up.

And of course he admitted that he initially underestimated the impact of the internet and then rather overestimated its potential with the ill timed and overly expensive purchase of MySpace.

So it could be argued that there have been few worse ‘when it comes to seeing around corners’. However, that misses the point. The most impressive characteristic of Mr Murdoch, apart from his incredible and enduring energy, is his preparedness to fail. As Robert F Kennedy said: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

Today, when Mr Murdoch is in his 80th year, he is still the most inspiring media owner because he is still prepared to fail and fail greatly. So, who knows whether The Daily will prove to be a success or not.

But what can be absolutely guaranteed is that interactive newspapers will develop over the coming years and, irrespective of how the market develops – I defy anyone to predict accurately how and how quickly it will progress – Mr Murdoch will have a significant influence on its development and will probably (and quite rightly) end up owning a fair chunk of that market as well.

At which point various politicians, competitors, commentators etc (who will have taken no risks and made no material contribution to the changing world of media) will bleep that it’s unfair that his organisation is in such a dominant position, blah, blah, blah. Remind you of anything?

I thought I end with another quote about success, mainly because I just like it as a quote, but I guess it may not be entirely inappropriate to the subject matter: “Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success, ” Jim Backus.