News Corp owns 20th Century Fox film studio, Fox broadcast network and Fox News channel, in the way of television and film. As far as newspaper and print media goes, they own the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the Australian newspaper, HarperCollins book publishing, and more.

Today, Murdoch sent out a memo to his staff confirming that indeed the split is going to be a reality. While Murdoch will remain chairman to both entities, and lead what he calls the creation of new companies, many changes will have to take place for the businesses to function independently. All Things D has published Rupert’s Memo to his employees.

Here’s a few segments:

“It is with much enthusiasm and personal pride that I share with you today’s news regarding our plan to drive towards the next, transformative phase of this organization you and I have built together into one of the largest, most innovative media companies of our time.”

“That very size and breadth has created an opportunity to separate News Corporation into two global leaders in their own right — we will wow the world as two, as opposed to merely one.”

“I believe our leadership is born out of a spirit of innovation. We have never accepted the status quo. We have always been driven by the belief that we can do better — deliver a better product for our audiences and provide better performing businesses for our shareholders. Our success has come from our speed, flexibility and creativity in responding to changing markets, in combination with our commitment to serving our customers’ needs.”

“I will personally be leading the creation of our new companies and will serve as Chairman of both organizations and as CEO of the media and entertainment company. Chase Carey will continue to partner with me on leading the media and entertainment business, by serving as President and COO. We are busy working on other important details and will inform you as they become available.”

It will take about a year to get through the process of splitting the two companies, and in the end, the broadcasting and film side of the business will be much larger. Current shareholders of News Corp. will be given one share in each company, for each share they hold now.

Murdoch says the decision to split the company comes after a three year review of the structure of the organization, and that the two companies that result from the split, will be better managed than the one is right now. No doubt many issues and alterations will arise as a result of the split. We’ll keep you posted as the situation with the News Corp. split evolves.

Despite being affected by the same print downturn that affects all other newspapers, the NYT is still the third-largest print newspaper in the United States. The Times is available online free for “light” users, those who read 20 or fewer articles per month. There are smartphone apps available for iPhone and Android that channel Times content.

This latest price increase is yet another move by the old-school media titan making its way in the digital age. Back in 2002, The Times bought a fifteen percent stake in the Boston Red Sox, not because they had an interest in Red Sox baseball, but to get a piece of the New England Sports Network television channel that came with the team.

Indeed, many newspapers are changing their old business model for one that can remain profitable as more and more people get news via smartphone, tablet and laptop. Managers look for profit centers outside of the normal advertising sales and cover price that sustained papers throughout the 20th century.

For example, local papers may produce an entire insert for a single advertiser with a significant event, such as a job fair or grand opening. They may even assign writers to adorn the ad space with pseudo-articles that highlight topics that dovetail with the advertiser. This is one of many new approaches that smaller papers feel forced to take to keep their presses running. Others have turned to online video of news events, becoming de facto online television producers, with mixed results.

Finding ways to make these endeavors pay, via pay subscriptions, etc. has been the real challenge. So much news is available for free online that readers are loathe to pull out the plastic. Price increases like this one are sure to keep coming until the fateful day that paper is no longer viable, however far off that may yet be.

The publication said the move would create a second revenue stream and preserve its ad business. "It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web," it said.

There has been a great deal of speculation around what this would mean for bloggers, who frequently link to the New York Times. The publication is clearly not anti-blogger or anti-link, because they are now saying they’ll not even include referrals from blog links in a reader’s limited free access. A spokesperson for the NYT tells Peter Kafka of MediaMemo, "The pay model will be designed so readers that are referred from third party sites such as blogs will be able to access that content without hitting their limit, enabling NYTimes.com to continue being a part of the open web."

That’s good news for bloggers who rely heavily on the New York Times as a source, because nobody wants to point readers to a link in which they are prompted to subscribe for access (though it certainly does occur from time to time, and is perhaps unavoidable in some cases). It’s also probably in the New York Times’ best interest, because the casual reader arriving from a blog link is much more likely to simply backtrack than actually subscribe.

The NYT says it hasn’t set the limit number for free access yet, but the paywall isn’t supposed to go up until January, so there is plenty of time to work that out. The limit is not something they’re going to want to launch without some careful consideration, though they can always change it depending on its success/failure.

By the way, a recent study found that the New York Times is one of the top four sites most often linked to by bloggers.

Would you pay for unlimited access to New York Times online content? Even if the most popular articles are linked to from blogs, from which you can gain free access? Tell us what you think.

There are still a lot of details to be worked out from the sound of it, and since the change won’t go into effect for a year, maybe they will have enough time to get it right. However, publishers have been trying to get this right for years already, and are still struggling to find that true answer. You have to wonder, what makes them think they can get the details ironed out by then?

It would be one thing to announce it and start doing it. Other publications do this, but a year is an incredibly long time in the online world. There are so many things that could happen and questions that may still remain unanswered in the online news industry. News Corp. for example, has set off a firestorm over whether or not people should be able to freely link to free content on the web. There are just so many things that come into play that it seems rather strange to assume everything will fall into place a year from now. Who knows what condition the industry will be in by then? Publications that are using paid models right now may decide it’s not working and switch to a different plan. To reiterate, a year is a long time, particularly in an industry with so many question marks.

"This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper is quoted as saying. "We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."

I would say the thought process has been in motion for some time, and it’s hard to imagine setting a deadline for the discussion to wrap up in such a timeframe. Does setting such a deadline suggest a hint of desperation? The Times says that any changes will be closely watched by other publishers of online content, and there is no doubt that this will indeed be the case.

The publication refers to Nielsen Online and analysts’ data indicating that NYTimes.com is "by far" the most popular newspaper site in the country with over 17 million readers a month in the U.S. alone.

Do you read the New York Times? Would you pay for frequent access or get your news from other sources? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> New York Time’s Could Announce Paid Model This Week

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Is This the Answer for Online News Revenue?

Well, it appears that The Associated Press loves carnival games as the NYT reports the news organization is determined to put an end to the scraping of its content.

Each article — and, in the future, each picture and video — would go out with what The A.P. called a digital “wrapper,” data invisible to the ordinary consumer that is intended, among other things, to maximize its ranking in Internet searches. The software would also send signals back to The A.P., letting it track use of the article across the Web.

Clearly, The AP wants to monetize the content that it’s worked hard to produce–you can’t blame it for that–but I fear it’s about to learn that its efforts will be futile.

You see, my experience tells me that the number of legitimate content publishers–the ones that The AP can actually hope to get payment from–will either stop publishing AP content, or likely never scraped it in the first place. The vast majority of the sites that are causing AP’s headaches are the spammers that set up dozens of Blogspot.com blogs, scrape vast amounts of content, then hide behind fictitious emails and WHOIS information. In other words, The AP’s not likely to reach these scrapers–let alone get a dime out of them!

Look, The AP is desperate. Traditional newspapers are cutting back, so the company has little choice but to try and earn revenue from those misusing its content. Unfortunately, I think they’ll find that when you play carnival games, the carnival always wins!

Comments

Why can’t you blame the NYT? The newspaper is a mainstay of traditional media and everyday it "wakes-up" to find another hot new blog–with attention grabbing headlines–chipping away at its readership. It’s not that the Times wants to take pot shots at bloggers, it’s just that it thinks that, by writing controversial articles, it can get a pass to the bloggers’ lounge.

Paul Chaney offered his thoughts on the NYT piece and asked me, via Twitter: "I’d like to talk to you about the rigor required of your bloggers relative to this post if u don’t mind."

My response was probably not what he expected: "I can’t relate. I nor my bloggers, stress out over blogging. I don’t blog 12+ hours a day, although I do blog at night, if needed."

Of course, I want Marketing Pilgrim to be successful and considered the top internet marketing news site. But, at the expense of my or my writers’ health? No way!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll "chase the scoop" if the little blighter jumps in front of me and sticks its tongue out. But will I camp out all night in the hopes that I’ll get a glimpse of a scoop? Not when there are 300 thread-count sheets with my name on them (not literally).

Instead, I try to keep my blogging in perspective and under control. OK, so last night I blogged about Yahoo’s AMP development, but that took my less than 20 minutes and I had the TV on in the background. This morning, I woke up around 9am, fixed coffee and breakfast (ok, Mrs Beal did the fixing) and then responded to email. When I finally got to my RSS feeds (and subsequent blog posts) I was relaxed and excited about my writing.

How will the rest of the day pan out? Who knows? I’ll certainly keep my eyes open for breaking news, but I’ll focus on bringing value to the conversation, rather than the desperation that comes from being first.

If you want to be an A-list blogger, you can certainly try the path of 20-hour days, juiced up on caffeine and Red Bull, but that’s not the only path. Instead, figure out how to integrate blogging so that it’s a fun activity in your day. Blog when you have energy and passion, not when embargos lift. And remember, being fast and furious, doesn’t mean you’ll win the race.

Comments

Read/WriteWeb reports:

The videos will feature non-professional journalists and will run on the Op-Ed section of the site until February 5, so-called “Super Tuesday” when a large number of US states hold primary elections.

RWW also points out that the NY Times has run clips from Bloggingheads.tv since October.

However, I think this constitutes a new level of involvement from the New York Times. If you were never a comms major in college (ah, freshman year), the New York Times is an institution in print journalism. This the newspaper that’s won the most Pulitzer Prizes, the one with “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” the one that can get away with its own style guide (which does mean that they’re supposed to print things like “U.R.L.’s”). It’s one of the three largest print dailies in the US.

But they don’t have a TV station. They don’t have original, professional video content. They have published letters to the editor for decades, but don’t have comments on their website. So I think it’s a bit of a big deal for the Times to issue basically an open invitation to contribute to their website.

The question is, who will?

Comments

However, he also said a couple of really dumb things about blogs and social media. Those dumb things are ably skewered by Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine, who Keller referred to in his speech.

In a nutshell, the NYT executive editor says Jeff and his ilk are of the view that bloggers and “citizen journalists” can more or less replace traditional journalists — and then Keller goes on to say that can’t possibly happen, because journalists like those at the Times have standards, training, put themselves in harm’s way in pursuit of the story, etc. etc. The only problem with all that, of course, is that hardly anyone — and especially Jeff Jarvis — is arguing anything like that.

As Jeff notes — and Dan Gillmor does as well — Keller’s argument is a straw man, designed to pump up traditional journalism at the expense of some pseudo-horde of random “citizen journalists” who want to take their jobs. Why can’t we admit that in some cases, people who haven’t been anointed with the title “journalist,” either by someone at a journalism school or by an editor at an established news outlet, can at least help to produce journalism? Why is that so hard?

Comments

The NYT has announced the integration of Blogrunner–a news aggregator similar to Techmeme–a service it acquired in 2005. Take a look at the Technology section and you’ll see the "Technology Headlines From Around the Web".

That the NYT is adding news from other resources–including blogs–is not a big surprise. The newspaper is one of the few mainstream media sites that appear to "get" social media and are aggressively pursuing models that embrace citizen journalism.

Equally not surprising is the way other MSM sites have handled this announcement–they’ve not said a word. Looking at Google News, you’ll see that only blogs appear to be talking about the announcement. Isn’t that just indicative of all that is wrong with old-school media? Heaven forbid they link to an announcement by one of their rivals! Contrast that with bloggers. Marketing Pilgrim constantly links to sites that you might consider to be our competitors–TechCrunch, Mashable, SEL, etc–because we know that by doing so, we add value to your reading experience (plus, they’re great sites).

NYT is going to be a lone beacon for a while. Until other mainstream news sites realize that you have more to gain than lose–by linking to your rivals–they will continue to look like social media noobs!

Comments

Content is selected by NYT editors based on its significance, but is initially gleaned from Blogrunner.com‘s feed aggregator. The expanded technology section is intended to offer readers a more comprehensive understanding of companies, trends, policy, and business.

NYTimes.com senior vice president and general manager Vivian Schiller speaks more like a leathery general in online combat. "This new site further enhances The New York Times’s dominant position among the influential readers who frequent our business and technical sections. With the deployment of Blogrunner to aggregate the most relevant content from around the Web, we will further solidify our position as the online ‘must-read.’"

It looks as though content is still in the process of being built up, as some categories are lacking. But the Times hasn’t shied away from including traditional competitors like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. Click on an article, and the editors provide links to related articles, communities and threads.

"This section is essentially all you need to understand everything that is happening, on any given day, in the world of technology," said Lawrence Ingrassia, business and financial editor, The New York Times.

And you know, he may be right about that. The layout is fantastic, the user interface is highly intuitive, and it pulls in content from everywhere. Time will tell its weaknesses. Early on, one of those weaknesses appears to be speed, with sources appearing within hours where TechMeme and Google News aggregators pop up within minutes.

But they don’t have that editor’s touch, nor the nice layout. And the NYT website has an automatic 14 million plus readership to direct.