Last week, News Corp co-chairman and heir apparent Lachlan Murdoch dropped a cool US$150m (A$217m) on a Los Angeles mansion that, according to a Bloomberg source, once featured on noted anti-poor ’60s comedy The Beverly Hillbillies.
Following a good decade or two of mass layoffs, outlet closures and just general media collapse, it’s quite a time to set a new Californian real estate record, even if Lachie managed to knock off at least US$100m from the asking price.
Crikey dives into where else the billionaire media mogul might have invested his cash.
2170 journalists at The Australian for a year
According to PayScale, the highest salary of a News Corp journalist is $86,000. If we assume The Oz bumps this up to at least $100,000 (including entitlements) for their good journalists, Lachlan could have more than plugged any holes in that sinking ship.
Australian Community Media, or 542 new regional media websites
Regional news has been the first, and continuing, casualty in the death of the newspaper.
Lachlan could have either helped stem this stream of death by purchasing former Fairfax division Australian Community Media for $125 million — including its 160-odd mastheads and 130 associated websites — with almost $100m leftover in change. Or, if we assume $400,000 to cover website startup and maintenance costs, he could have created 542 new regional media websites for hyper-local public interest journalists to submit their own stories and fill the gap.
5425 cadet journalists
Ask any journalism grad and the opportunities for paid, decent news jobs are slim. At PayScale’s lowest end, $40,000, News Corp could fund 5425 cadet journalists. Spread that out to 542 per year, and you’ve covered the next generation of journalists for the next decade.
607.8 Judith Sloans
Say hard, regional or sustainable news isn’t for you. Say you want to go for the big guns, someone willing to stand up to Jacinda Adern’s response to the Christchurch massacre. Say you want Judith Sloan.
After her $357,000 salary leaked last year, we can officially say Lachlan Murdoch could have afforded 607.8 Judith Sloans instead of a Beverley Hillbillies mansion.
13, 690 Newstart single mothers with one dependent child, for a whole year.
140 Bell 214B fire-fighting choppers wet-leased from McDermott Aviation for the next three years.
Far better alternatives, Jack, than those suggested by Mr Woods. Do we really want Murdoch to own yet more media, or be inflicted with more Judith Sloans?
Yeah – TBH I’ve never understood the commercial/relative value of by-lines. News could employ four daily beat reporters – providing copy every day for hungry mastheads – for the price they’re paying Sloan to churn out turgid predictable dreck maybe twice a week. It’s just bad business planning.
Mind you, the ABC is no saint on this stuff, either. You could employ six, seven entry level journo’s for the price of a Leigh Sales or a Richard Glover. And not only do those guys get to do the ‘dream’ gig most working journalisms would cheerfully do for scale, they also get to to moonlight-coin it big time in the private sector MC/conference circuit, too, on the back of their publicly-underwritten profile. They’ve all got commercial agents, even as they lead the ‘protect our press’ campaigns and grumble about down-sizing, etc.
Now now……can’t have actual journalists working at News Corpse outlets.
Lachlan & Sarah Murdoch’s family now officially entitled to the name The Beverley Hillbillies.
No matter how luxurious the real estate they will still breathe the same smog as LA’s homeless.
“Lachlan Murdoch could have afforded 607.8 Judith Sloans instead of a Beverley Hillbillies mansion”
Go mansion!
Instead of what he could of bought, look at what he actually bought. A trophy house. Lachlan appears to fit the bill for the classic situation of new money; the first generation making it (Sir Keith), the second generation consolidating it (Rupert), and the third generation blowing it. His record at OneTel and Channel 10 speaks for itself. The Old Buzzard can only pop so many Viagra to keep getting his leg over Mrs Jagger, once he’s gone from a massive heart attack, I fully expect Lachlan’s business nous to come fully to the fore and the whole steaming NewsCorp edifice will collapse. Not before time.