Murdoch tames the internet. Or not.

The following interview from Sky News Australia reveals a lot about Rupert Murdoch's attitudes to the internet and how he intends to conquer it. As possibly the world's most powerful media mogul he has the potential to completely rewrite the rulebook on making money online. Or he might have misjudged the public's attitude to the internet entirely.

Murdoch owns part of Sky News Australia, so the question of bias may be raised. However it could be argued that the interviewer, David Sheers, is brave to press critical questions such as whether Fox News is truly fair and balanced. Behind Murdoch is a wall of newspapers. happy coincidence or carefully choreographed statement?

• Websites that are making a couple of million are not making 'serious money', Murdoch is clearly operating and thinking in terms of capital that eclipses most other organisations.

• Accessing News Corp's content will be cheaper than buying a newspaper, the savings being made from printing and distribution costs. However, it's not free and consumers used to free content may resent even the smallest of fees - especially if there's still free alternatives from other news providers. It may be dependent on whether other media providers follow suite or not.
  

• The hard copy newspaper will disappear, but not for 20 years. We know this will happen eventually but it's interesting to see that those at the top believe it too and are preparing for it.
  

• It's a generational thing, people under 30 just don't buy newspapers. We've had this discussion with our lecturer here at Winchester university, there has been a complete shift in culture, possibly propagated by the rise of the internet.
  

• "The BBC is a scandal", he believes they can use their £4bn+ budget to force their way into new mediums and opportunities where commercial enterprises just can't compete. Mr Murdoch appears frustrated that he BBC is able to be a global leader with new products like 'iplayer' and they don't have to deal with advertising and revenue in the way he does.
  

• He appears to support the 'three strikes and out' method of dealing with file sharers that proves to be controversial and unpopular if imposed in the UK.

• Murdoch is very critical of the current American administration, perhaps he is unable to work with them in the same way as he has been able to before.

• Every world leader is afraid of the press. It's hard to argue with the point made here when we know how long our politicians spend wooing news editors in the lead up to elections. And we know the power of the press, huge damage has been done to Labour and Gordon Brown now Murdoch's UK papers have switched allegiance and support Cameron. The viscous front page attacks from the Sun about Brown's hand written letter to the mother of a dead soldier being a prime and current example

• According to this interview, Murdoch regrets that the UK papers have turned against Gordon Brown but feels that it was the right decision. I believe he's seriously downplaying his own hand in the editorial process here and that it would ultimately have been his decision, his call to turn against Labour.

By charging for content that internet users have come to expect will be free, Murdoch is taking a huge gamble and one that I'm doubtful will pay off in the way he hopes. My generation doesn't buy papers, a point he concedes - we get our news for free. Why would we start paying now, even if the medium is one we're more familiar with? Content such as the embedded video from youtube at the beginning of this post is exactly the kind of material he seems to resent being freely available. But perhaps internet culture has come to far to do a u-turn now. If Rupert Murdoch is saying this is the way forward, why does it feel so much like it would be taking a step backwards?

News Editor - Learn by doing?

Winol - Winchester News Online. This is a project journalism students at Winchester university are being graded on. Essentially we've been tasked with setting up our own news organisation, we have an online news and features site and weekly we'll produce a 15 minute live news program. We've just had our first dry run and blimey was it hard work. The temptation to wander around mumbling 'student', 'just learning' and mistakes will happen' is growing by the second.



I'm in the role of news editor and my tasks are to choose the right stories to pursue, manage my reporters and ensure the content is delivered on time. This week I think I failed on all accounts. So either this bizarre optimism I'm feeling is insanity creeping in or I'm confident the next run through will be many times better. Let's hope it's the latter eh?

News is a unique and unpredictable beast, no amount of sitting around planning and discussing will change local events and give us an amazing Hampshire news bulletin. We have to find the news and then report it in the most engaging and informative way possible. So the most important aspect of news journalism is also the most difficult, tracking down interesting happenings somewhere as sleepy as Winchester.

I honestly believe reporting news is much more demanding than feature writing - not to knock features or those who write them, we have a fantastic features team at Winchester that's working extremely hard and coming up with great ideas. It takes a completely different skills set to write features, one I lack completely and I admire those who do. But they do have that luxury of being able to make up ideas, try that in news and people tend to get a little narked off...

All news teams, no matter whether they work for TV, radio or print will meet frequently in a meeting chaired by the editor. They share the stories they've found and the editor decides which ones make the cut. Now being able to speak from experience - this is the make or break part of the entire news day.

If the right stories are pitched and chosen then everything after will go down like a cold beer on a hot summers afternoon. Running with weak ideas will be forced, frustrating and ultimately make for a very weak final product. The problems this week were evident: a lack of communication and preparation.

And the solutions? As the news editor I need to be available all the time, I can't go out to work on a story myself. I'll be there on the end of the phone if I'm needed and I'll keep track of my reporters, know where they are and what they're doing. But I need to trust them more rather than trying to micromanage every aspect of every story. If they pitch a story to me and I like it then I'll give them the go ahead. My team are enthusiastic and committed, everything else will come with time and practice.

We've started an online calendar of upcoming events, our news diary that we can all access and update. By looking ahead we can build up a list of news prospects that will make it easier in the Monday news meeting to find the right stories fill a bulletin. We'll also bring the meeting forward to earlier in the day, the more time we have to work on the pieces, the better they will be.

The week was as difficult as it was rewarding. It was a start and there's definitely something there that can be built upon in the coming weeks. It wasn't until I made these mistakes that I knew how to avoid them. I've tried, and missed the mark. Now I've learnt from it and now I'll do a better job because of it.

Two horrific stories and one fantastic night of learning

It was an odd moment, Gerry Conlon sipped his beer and looked me in the eyes and said "I love this country. I really do." And why shouldn't he? Apart from wrongfully imprisoning him for 15 years it's great.

On Friday night in an pub just around the corner from Fleet St he happily chatted to our group of Winchester journalism students and even demonstrated a few handy, quick and easy torture techniques he 'picked up' while in police custody. On my lecturer. Which was damn funny.

Gerry was one of the Guildford four, meeting him and hearing his story firsthand was exhilarating and just one of the reasons the Innocence Network training weekend was really special. It's safe to say that I couldn't be more excited about setting up our own innocence project and putting investigative journalism skills to good use.

We arrived in central London and entered the luxury offices of Freshfield Bruckhaus Deringer, all sparkling glass and stainless steel. The toilets were some of the nicest I've ever been in and you can always safely judge a place by its toilets... After grabbing a cheeky coffee we were ushered into a conference hall that puts Winchester's lecture theaters to shame.

On the first night we were spoken to by a panel of five chaired by Bruce Kent, the other four speakers were Terry McCarthy from the Parole Board, Dr Michael Naughton who founded the INUK and victims of misjustice Paul Blackburn and Gerry Conlon who told us their stories. A lot of what we heard wasn't pretty.

Paul was convicted at the age of 15 for a sexual offence, 25 years later he was acquitted. He spent a quarter of a century in prison. Because of the nature of the crime he was charged with he was a target for bullying and violence in prison. Paul told us of a terrifying night when the lights went out and the door to his cell opened, three men in balaclavas entered wielding blades and attacked him. During his incarceration he was stabbed seven times, beaten and burned. "It was like being taken and put on another planet, a violent, dangerous one" he said, "It's a difficult place to grow up in prison... It left me completely lost in life. I don't really know where I'm going from here."

He spoke of how difficult it was for him to try and prove his innocence: "How do you fight a case you know nothing about because you didn't do it... it will drive you mad in the end." It's not hard to see how a teenager could struggle to face a system they simply don't understand. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to enter a world of lawyers and judges at such a young age.

Gerry Conlon wasn't much older when he entered prison, he told us how at age 20 the police stormed his house at five in the morning, dragging him out of bed in front of his family and throwing him into a van where they burnt him with cigarettes and later broke his nose. "October is a weird month for me" he said, recalling how he had been arrested on the 22nd. Gerry describes the events vividly: "These people were corrupt and they were torturers", then he told of a gauntlet of police officers that kicked and spat on him at Addlestone police station.

Gerry unsurprisingly knows a lot about law and miscarriages of justice, he spoke fondly of the recently deceased journalist and campaigner for the wrongly convicted, Ludovic Kennedy, saying the man cared about the justice system and cared about people. Then he went on to talk about the Criminal Cases Review Commision (CCRC), started in response to Gerry and others' wrongful convictions: "They set us the CCRC and initially it worked. But then they started taking away money and they started taking away case workers."

Dr Michael Naughton also spoke about the CCRC, telling of mixed successes with the Bristol innocence project: "The last few weeks have been challenging. The Bristol project has had a case sent for appeal. So why aren't I smiling? Well, I'm just miserable" he joked. The Birmingham six and Guildford four wouldn't have been successful under current CCRC rules despite being the main reason the body was created. Dr Naughton made clear that there is a big difference between having a conviction overturned and actually proving innocence and an innocence project should be concerned with truth not just legal loopholes. I'm beginning to think the law students involved don't have any advantage over those of us studying journalism and in fact it may be the other way round entirely.

With the creation of the CCRC, Dr Naughton says the media began to believe that miscarriages of justice weren't newsworthy anymore since a government body was assigned to deal with them. But now there's a need to resurrect media interest. He said "Journalists and the right kind of journalist are very important. It's the wrong kind of journalist that contributes to wrongful convictions".

After the meeting we left the hall to discover a plentiful selection of beers and wines, perhaps to get us in the mood to talk with other students and the speakers at the event. It worked and probably not just because alcohol was there to ease the process, the talks and stories we heard fired us up and all we wanted to do was talk more about the project. And as everyone else left for their hotels and hostels we played the part of journalists admirably, heading straight for the nearest pub. Gerry, Paul, Michael and others kindly joined us.

One of my colleagues mentioned that the talks were interesting, Michael Naughton was in earshot and his passion showed through as he turned and said "Interesting? Interesting!? I think the word you're looking for is inspiring."