Media

Rupert Murdoch was standing in a deep corner of the Rose Hall at about 7:30 p.m. last night to toast his fellow influencers: It was the Time 100 celebration, an event that drums up publicity for the magazine's decreasingly influential list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

The day before, Mr. Murdoch had promised investors and reporters listening in on a News Corp. investors' call that he'd prevail in his purchase of Newsday over rival bidders Mort Zuckerman and the Dolans.

Sam Zell, he said, was a man of his word and had agreed to sell; if hurdles like the Federal Communications Commissions rules about media monopolies got in the way, he'd sue to make them go away.

Last night he tempered his bravado.

"Yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty," he told The Observer. "I was telling the truth, but you don't know until ..." He trailed off. "[Mr. Zell] has a great reputation with the banks and the financial circles everywhere," he said a moment later.

But the big buzz around Rupert originates from his purchase more than a year ago of The Wall Street Journal. Has The Journal really improved since he took it over?

"Yes," Mr. Murdoch said. "But it's got a long way to go. It's breaking more news and it has a lot more news in it—political and international."

He said they'll hire Mr. Brauchli's replacement in "a couple weeks, maybe three."

At that moment, fellow influential-type Martha Stewart interrupted to say hello to Mr. Murdoch.

"I wanna get a picture!" she called out generally. A photographer scurried over and obliged.

"I have a great picture of your mother!" Ms. Stewart said to Mr. Murdoch. "Is she still alive?"

"Yes," Mr. Murdoch replied.

"I'm so glad," said Ms. Stewart. "My mother, she lived only to 93. It's my first Mother's Day without her."

Ms. Stewart remembered the time a few years ago when Mr. Murdoch's mom made her a salad in Australia, using vegetables from her garden.

"Delicious! It was amazing. But she didn't want to talk about her son at all!"

Mr. Murdoch was with his wife, Wendi, and eventually worked his way to Paul Steiger. In the Time 100 issue itself, which adopts an Interview-magazine-like conceit of allowing subjects to be interviewed by non-reporters, Mr. Steiger, the former Wall Street Journal managing editor, is Mr. Murdoch's interlocutor. It was not, how do you say, a hardball.

And it didn't go over very well inside The Journal either. Staffers weren't too happy when Mr. Steiger took a multimillion-dollar parachute out of his job from Mr. Murdoch; imagine how they felt when they saw this interview, which was conducted ages before Mr. Murdoch dispensed with Mr. Steiger's successor, Marcus Brauchli, but hit newsstands just as the newsroom was cooling off from that blow.

"I love the people [at The Journal]," he said. "I don't think they'll stay mad at me for long."

Soon afterward, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes turned up to ask Mr. Steiger what happened to Mr. Brauchli. We didn't get the answer.

At dinner, Mr. Murdoch sat next to Rick Stengel, editor of the whole shebang, who in turn was seated next to John McCain.

Senator McCain made the list, as did both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the rumor circulating around the room last night to explain why he was the one who showed up was that he wanted to bend Mr. Murdoch's ear, and knew he was going to be sitting close. We're not sure whether he got anywhere, but his toast to Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton was quite an impressive performance.

"Senator Obama is a man of unusual eloquence who has performed the great service of summoning to the political arena Americans who once thought that it was of little benefit to them," he said. "Senator Clinton has demonstrated great tenacity and courage. I count myself among their many admirers."

Mr. Murdoch also was in a prime spot for the performance of blushing bride Mariah Carey.

Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of Mr. Murdoch's tabloid rival, The Daily News, and one of his competitors in the bid to buy Newsday, was stuck up in the rafters, about as far from the stage as you could be.

"I don't know what they're going to do," he said about Sam Zell and the Tribune Co.'s big decision about whom to sell to.

Would he raise his bid, which currently matches Mr. Murdoch's?
"No comment," he said, and then took a big bite of Arriana Huffington's dessert, a chocolate torte with chocolate espresso sauce and fresh raspberries. Ms. Huffington, with whom he has been linked romantically, was off working the room.

Media Mob got an e-mail a few minutes ago from a publicist at Simon & Schuster informing us, in the subject line, that "Facebook is subject of new S&S acquisition." Holy cow, we thought! Mark Zuckerburg finally agreed to sell? To Simon & Schuster? They've had a pretty good year, sure, but what would a publishing house want with Facebook? Maybe someone up high thought they were really buying a book?

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A day after the Times announced that there will be layoffs--perhaps around 15--the paper has picked up a star: Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer-winner on his coverage of Bush-Cheney White House, is moving to Dean Baquet's Washington bureau.

Several weeks ago, David Barstow wrote an investigative piece for The New York Times taking a hard look at a group of ex-military pundits and their relationships with the Pentagon during the run-up to and early stages of the war in Iraq. Today, in the Politico, former Media Mobster Michael Calderone and his colleague Avi Zenilman report that while the television networks have mostly ignored the unflattering revelations in the Times story, various Democratic Congressional leaders are now calling for investigations "that could provoke the networks to finally cover the Times story—and, in effect, themselves."  read more »

Rupert Murdoch said he "absolutely" trusts Sam Zell to sell him Newsday—after all, Mr. Zell is a man of his word, right?

"We're hoping to wrap it up within the next week, and I don't mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days. It takes two to agree, but we're at a pretty advanced stage. I trust Mr. Zell absolutely. He's famous for being a man of his word. We think everything's in hand."

This was during a conference call with reporters and investors yesterday. If he buys the paper, it'll still cover Long Island news and it won't fold into some sort of super-New York Post. Also, apparently there are "no issues" with the FCC, the Justice Department and Congress.

"That's something which would be handled when our licenses come up for renewal on TV and we're confident we'll get through that, even if we have to go to court."

...

"There are no issues anywhere. We don't have any overlap, other than 7 percent with Newsday. There's no possibility of antitrust with Newsday."

And in other Murdoch news: the New York Post's cover price is being raised to 50 cents!

The Dolans bought the Sundance Channel today for $496 million. And what of Newsday? They still have the leading bid.

Look out, Pat Kiernan! The world of round-the-clock local New York news channels is about to get a whole lot more competitive.

According to The New York Times’ Bill Carter, NBC Universal is planning to start a 24-hour local news channel, to be called … “New York’s Newschannel.”

More from the Times:

NBC’s plan calls for rebuilding Channel 4’s newsroom and melding its content closely with the coming news channel, the existing local Web site, and out-of-home video displayed in locations like gas pumps and back seats of taxicabs. NBC will even take WNBC’s name off its local news Web site, simply calling it NBC New York. The channel will be shown on the digital tier of cable systems in the New York area, including Time Warner, Cablevision and Comcast. It is expected to begin in November.

On Monday, MSNBC kicked off The New York Times Special Primary Edition, a new irregularly recurring daytime political show hosted by John Harwood in which Times scribes chew over news from the campaign trail.

So how did the show's premier do?

Not great!

According to Nielsen data, "The New York Times Special Primary Edition," finished fourth among cable news networks in the 2 P.M. time slot.

Here are the numbers in terms of total viewers:

(1) FOX News Channel – 873,000

(2) CNN – 508,000

(3) CNBC – 401,000

(4) MSNBC (New York Times)– 271,000

(5) Headline News – 199,000

The show's debut put up similarly lackluckster numbers among viewers aged 25-54:

(1) FNC – 205,000

(2) CNN – 185,000

(3) CNBC – 135,000

(4) HLN – 101,000

(5) MSNBC (New York Times) – 101,000

There will be layoffs at The Times. In an emotionally charged memo, Bill Keller writes that the vast majority of the 100 newsroom job cuts he announced back in February will come through buyouts, but the paper is "forced to resort" to laying the rest off. He said the paper will not disclose numbers or names in this "usettling and dispiriting time."

In the memo, he vehemently thanks reporters and editors at the paper for their service, as well as the Sulzbergers, and then says, "it is time to regroup."

He writes:

Most important, we retain the strongest team of talented journalists in the business, and they—you—remain the key to all of our ambitions.

Now it is time to regroup and move forward. In the coming weeks we will be working with department heads to reorganize and reimagine our coverage to ensure the quality journalism that is our standard. When we met in the Times Center in February, I told you that we were facing two seemingly contradictory challenges in the coming year. On the one hand, we must reduce our staffing and costs. On the other hand, we must do whatever we can to strengthen our competitive position. As I said then, that will mean our staff cuts will be offset a little by some investments to ensure, among other things, that we are well equipped to navigate the passage to our digital future.

Entire memo after the jump ...  read more »

Our Politicker colleague Jason Horowitz overheard an amusing thing in this morning's Clinton Conference call with Howard Wolfson.

As Newsday's Glenn Thrush was introducing himself, he took the unusual step of tipping his hat to any—and all—possible buyers of his paper, jokingly referring to himself as, "Glenn Thrush of News Corporation, Cablevision or Boston Properties."