Can't Blame Murdoch for Seizing on Media Shift

Many observers, figuring that losing money equals death, reason that so-called old media is dying. Others predict that the boundaries separating print, online and TV are melting into a murky stew.

Again, I don't think either opinion is quite right.

Media boundaries aren't going away, they're being redrawn. Things are unsettled, the dust is flying, and no one can say with any certainty where the boundaries will fall.

The best you can do is know that, for the time being, you just don't know.

Murdoch knows this. A few other barons who hail from traditional media do as well: Brian Roberts of Comcast is one. Terry Semel is another -- well, he was until Google rewrote the playbook in a short span of time, and Yahoo! failed to keep up.

Then there's ... OK, let's just say there are at least two.

When News Corp. bought MySpace, some people predicted Murdoch would gum it up. But instead he let it do its thing, which is all he could have done. No one -- not MySpace's founders nor any of its users -- ever understood where MySpace was going. Yet MySpace has thrived inside News Corp.

Internet giants like Google have grown quickly in large part because they know you can't herd consumers or visitors to your site into the corrals you've designed. They let them ramble about free-range, creating their content, finding what they seek and recommending it in turn to others.