According to a report in the Financial Times, it is the most in-depth meeting Murdoch has held to address problems facing News Corp's newspapers, which include The Times, The Sun, The Australian and the New York Post.It is mostly going to be News Corp execs talking, but some guest speakers will include Meg Whitman, chief executive of eBay.Murdoch's papers, like everyone else, are being hit as sales fall away to the web and to free papers and the FT says the meeting is designed to map out a strategy for these divisions.It could signal a switch-around of top executives with a possible move for Times editor Robert Thompson, a favourite of Murdoch's.Murdoch might have spent fairly heavily on digital with investment at the Times and Sun in the UK, and of course the $580m he spent buying MySpace, but there is still no clear vision for the future digital distribution of news.Last week interestingly, MySpace launched a news service that allows members of the social-networking website to decide which online stories are most deserving of attention. MySpace News will combine elements of Google News, which collates stories thematically, and Digg.com, which ranks stories submitted by readers based on their popularity. Divided into 25 topics and 300 sub-sections, it will showcase articles from across the web, and cover everything from politics to sport and entertainment.Why would you ever go to a newspaper site if you were a MySpace member? I'm sure that will come up.Newspapers have the dual problem of needing to attract news online, but losing facing a currently shaky online ad environment and the power of the search engines, which I wrote about the other day.
Gordon Macmillan
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