Paper review: Thomson’s ‘holiday’; Gruen urged to talk about media; New Idea has no idea

Tim Burrowes

April 6, 2009 10:38

For a man who’s supposedly on holiday, Robert Thomson has certainly found a lot of time for The Australian.

And in today’s interview on the front page of the Australian’s media section, the editor of the Wall Street Journal following a remarkably similar line to that of his boss Rupert Murdoch in taking a swipe at Google.

Thomson, who was probably speaking to his sister title at about the same time that Rupert Murdoch was telling a US conference that Google was stealing from publishers, took a strikingly similar approach, accusing Google of being a parasite. It’s almost as if the attack on Google is planned rather than off-the-cuff thinking.

Meanwhile, a question that Thomson does not address in the piece is whether he’s doing any business during his “holiday” in Australia. Mumbrella hears he’s been in the News Ltd offices several times. A conspiracy theorist would wonder why there’s no question in the piece – even if accompanied by a denial – to him about any potential launch of an Australian or Asia Pacific edition of the Wall Street Journal.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.