As you might have guessed, Crikey thinks Rupert Murdoch is one of the
most interesting people in the world and probably the most powerful man
on the planet. Now we have taken this obsession to a new level by 
registering the domain name www.murdochwatch.com.

Now the question is what to do with it from our bunker here near
Murdoch Street in Camberwell, which we think is named after the family
given Rupert’s grandfather was the local vicar and Sir Keith’s first
job was as The Age’s correspondent in nearby Malvern.

The
Murdoch empire certainly generates enough news and opinion to warrant a
dedicated site, which will track News Corp’s global operations from The
Sun to Fox News and provide commentary and analysis.

We should
also use it for various shareholder tilts and campaigns given that
Rupert now chairs four different multi-billion media giants, BSkyB, Fox
Entertainment Group, News Corp and Hughes Electronics.

If anyone has suggestions on how we should use the domain, drop us a line to boss@crikey.com.au.

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Your murdochwatch.com suggestions:

Spike the Night Editor writes:

“Murdochwatch
must become a global hot gossip site, a fad, a must-read. It must
encourage completely safe and anonymous contributors from within the
massive Murdoch empire, not just another shite site for conspiracy
theorists, bores and whingers.
 
It’s gotta have a
journalistic edge, naturally, and perhaps a sort of PR Watch function –
alerting readers to cosy cross-promotional deals between Murdoch media
outlets, across print and electronic formats, and with sponsors,
advertisers and even governments with whom Murdoch is dealing (eg,
China, Russia, India, Australia).

It should cover global empire
moves that only make sense when the pieces are pulled together by such
a site. It should catalogue the comings and goings of key staff and
management. There should be a shareholder section with a sharp market
focus.  And it could also become a great archive for the fabulous
fuck-ups and regretable journalistic achievements that have marked what
has become a proper noun of global journalis: ‘the Murdoch tabloid’.”

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Picture perfect

How about some nice pictures of the best looking Murdoch?  ie.
Sarah, in her Bonds underwear! (You can always put the “hard news”
about daddy-in-law underneath the photos.)

David

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How it should be designed

Hi Crikey,

As
a tin pot bill & ben media owner like yourself, I appreciate that
murdochwatch needs to be low maintenance – you’re not going to get any
$$$ directly from it so I imagine allocating cash towards it will be a
big call. However, your discerning audience will demand something
comprehensive and appealing to the eye. Start small and simple – you
can always develop the site later if the returns (tangible &
intangible) warrant.

My suggestion:

 

Front-end: Splash out on a once off template that can be used for all pages - keep it simple & classic.

 

Site architecture: What about something simple like 1 page per month and a search field?

 

Content:
I’m not positive about this but I believe you can setup a web bot
or spider to automatically collect all documents available
online that contain a particular keyword and deposit these into
the appropriate repositories of a basic content management system
– probably the same content management system you use for crikey.com.au
(note the .au). Ben or Kate could go through it once a week to clean up
any irrelevant or duplicate entries and you could summarise each
month’s ‘Murdoch Movements’ in your own inimitable style at the top of
each page each month.

 

The
end result would be a site that is a chronologically
sorted resource centre on Murdoch. It would be great if you could
setup a cookie system so you could check out which journos, businessmen
& pollies use it, eh?

 

Good luck!

 

JR

 

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Leave some room for plenty of chatting

 

Crikey, you should make Murdoch Watch slash dot style site (

www.slashdot.com)

where articles/events are briefly commented on and people who are registered can chat about it. Goes down a treat.

 

You should do it using postnuke (www.postnuke.com)
which is an open source CRM solution which basically means its free.
Its a good little system becuase it can be entirely run by a non tech
outfit like Crikey.

 

All the best,

Simon

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Some American advice

Dear
to whom it may concern, I’m an American who just read your article on
your website via disinfo.com, An Ameican website. If I can offer up my
own personal opinion, murdochwatch.com in many ways should be like the
Drudge Report. Offer up the latest news about Rupert Murdoch, and
related & unrelated events. I wish you and everyone associated with
this the best of luck.

Sincerely,
Daniel E. Sherwood