News hypocrisy on nepotisim. Who wrote this yesterday?:

“The 80-year-old Westfield founder, executive chairman and control freak becomes just ‘normal’ chairman, ceding day-to-day control to sons Peter and Steven. The management revamp — coinciding with Westfield’s golden jubilee — sees eldest son David and independent director David Gonski depart the board, after 35 and 25 years, respectively. Also, existing director Brian Schwartz, erstwhile head of Ernst & Young and investment bank Investec, becomes deputy chair.

“Notably, Frank is not on the board of Westfield Retail Group, which houses the local shopping-centre assets hived off from the parent last year. So the revamp reflects an evolutionary approach to de-nepotising the group… Peter and Steven have been ‘joint managing directors’ for the last decade. In our mind, the CEO and MD terms are interchangeable, but we’re sure it amounts to a titular upgrade in the same way the Kremlin promoted favoured field marshals to generals.”

That’s a News Corp employee — Tim Boreham in The Australian. “De-nepotising” Westfield might be admirable, but what about News Corp? At last count Rupert Murdoch was executive chairman (and really the CEO), son James was running Europe and Asia, Lachie is a director while playing ducks and drakes at the Ten Network in Sydney and News is proposing to buy daughter Elizabeth’s company, Shine, giving her over $300 million and a board seat. And overnight it was revealed first daughter Prudence had become a board member of Murdoch’s Times Newspaper Holdings.

One of Lowy’s boys David left the board yesterday in the revamp. So in the nepotism stakes, the Murdochs arein front. Rupert is 80 on March 12, so he and Frank are of similar vintage. But will Murdoch follow Lowy? Not when he’s on the verge of grabbing back balance sheet control of BSkyB. And by the way, the BBC’s Panorama program is reportedly examining the News of the World phone hacking scandal that won’t go away. — Glenn Dyer

Money’s Browser gone from The Age. The Age‘s Saturday media column Media Browser — penned by veteran Eastern Suburbs gossip Lawrence Money — got squeezed out of last week’s edition, apparently by the Christchurch earthquake. But now it’s gone altogether, Money confirmed to Crikey: “Yep, dead as a carbon-tax promise.” But fans shouldn’t despair: “My Money’s Melbourne column and Modern Times blog march gloriously on.”

Ironically, Money repeatedly slammed rival Australian columnist Caroline Overington for the non-appearance of her twice-weekly Media Diary in The Australian over the summer break and also suggested Overington’s Saturday column was introduced as a foil when his column first appeared last year. No news yet as to whether The Oz will follow suit. Meanwhile, freshly-minted Fairfax “metro media” chief Jack Matthews is due to do the rounds of the newsroom next week to rev up the troops. — Andrew Crook

Age op-ed, via HuffPo, via Rhode Island. The Arab world is in upheaval, a revolutionary civil war is in the offing, a momentous transformation looms, and the contribution of The Age‘s op-ed page is … yet another article about people being mean to Israel.

The piece is dumb in an interesting way — asking the reader to make a hypothetical abstract choice about whether they would rather be extradited to Israel or various other Middle East countries (Israel or Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia? Choose now!), a fine example of the false premise, and a reminder it’s the pro-Zionists, rather than the Left, who are obsessed with putting Israel-Palestine at the centre of this historic moment.

But what’s really interesting is the provenance: a reprint from the reprint-loving Huffington Post, contributed by a former monthly columnist for the “Rhode Island Jewish Voice & Herald“. Boy what a must-print that was for the sole broadsheet of Melbourne, Australia. Standby for homemaking tips from the Wichita Baptist Observer. — Guy Rundle

Jobs: as thin as an iPad. Steve Jobs is not well. He’s on sick leave from Apple, with a history of cancer and a liver transplant in 2009. So this News.com.au splash seems pretty insensitive…

Do the Time Warp with Mary Jo Fisher. It was only a matter of time before someone did this — setting the Senator’s wild carbon tax dance to the appropriate music. Kudos, ABC Mid-North Coast.

When hiccups attack! Unfortunately, for this 3AW news reader, it was when she was reading the news…

Oz fights the good fight. Ben Packham and James Massola — The Australian’s preeminent online double act (the first comedic duo to feature two straight men) — were on fire this morning. After writing a yarn about increased funding for the Australian War Memorial, which The Oz claimed was the result of a Massola expose, Packham tweeted this note about his superhero partner:

It’s a bird, it’s a plane…

ABC confuses its South African presidents. The man in the picture is former South African president Thabo Mbeki, not current president Jacob Zuma…

Jobs’ surprise showing at ‘underwhelming’ iPad 2 launch

“The audience was thrilled that Jobs showed up: ‘We’ve been working on this product for a while, and I didn’t want to miss it. Thank you for having me,’ he told the audience. All Things Digital‘s Kara Swisher said it would be so. But was his appearance designed to distract us from an underwhelming launch?” — The Guardian

Packer’s resignation sparks questions about $125m Ten share

“Speculation that James Packer might quit his $125 million stake in the Ten Network mounted last night following his dramatic resignation from the board. Mr Packer resigned after Seven’s sales boss, James Warburton, was appointed chief executive of Ten.” — The Australian

Murdoch to sell Sky News?

“Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has offered to sell Sky News to allay concerns about the media giant’s takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting, it was reported tonight. The sale is understood to be a move to reassure Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is considering whether to refer News Corp’s proposed £7.5 billion bid for the shares in BSkyB it does not already own to the Competition Commission, the BBC said.” — The Independent

New storytelling social networking platform

“This week, a new company called Broadcastr (broadcastr.com) launched a free social-networking platform based on location-specific storytelling. Broadcastr stories are recorded and shared in audio format, with each pegged to a specific location. Listeners can search for stories by location or category, or may opt to ‘follow’ a person who they consider to be a good storyteller, sorting stories by that person into a special tab.” — The Wall Street Journal