The existential crisis that has gripped Rupert Murdoch’s Australian arm began with a rude discovery just after 2pm on Wednesday afternoon. The Crikey news website had stumbled across some of News Corp’s most intimate lingerie, and had just put it all up on the the net.
... The 276-page document is called the Blue Book, a weekly and year-to-date rundown of results at June 30, 2013 for every News Corp business in the country. ... The great newspaper engine which was Rupert Murdoch’s original springboard to take over the world was already under stress. In 2013, 70 per cent of its earnings disappeared, leaving operating income precariously balanced at $87.6 million. As Crikey pointed out, trying hard not to gloat, another year even half as bad as 2013 could put News Australia into the red.
Crikey took the documents off line after legal threats, but it seems not before business reporters all over the world had a chance to download them.
Crikey published what the Rupert Murdoch company calls internally "the blue book", the company's operating accounts for all its businesses. The documents, which date from last year, show News Corp's print and digital publications were suffering from large falls in revenue, with flagship paper The Australian losing $27 million. Late on Thursday afternoon Crikey removed hundreds of pages of the documents.
With any luck people downloaded them before Crikey took them down.
Normally, I'm not one to defend CEOs, even in the relatively genteel world of publishing. But this is really scummy:
Amazon publishes Hachette CEO's email address in pricing spat New York (AFP) — Amazon revealed Saturday the email address of the American head of publishing group Hachette, urging readers to pressure him in writing to end the two groups' simmering dispute over book pricing.
It is also amazingly short sighted.
Ferguson, Missouri's Police Department has been put on notice. International hacktivist group Anonymous has launched "Operation Ferguson" and promised swift action against authorities in city in response to the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a member of the Ferguson Police Department.
Anonymous has promised to take every web-based asset of the Ferguson Police Department and other corroborating agencies offline as well as release personal information of every officer should any protester by harmed or harassed while protesting Brown's death.
It seems that the mayor saw this coming.
Anticipating a problem, the mayor of Ferguson had the IT Department take down all personal information from the site on Saturday
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.