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David Speers of SkyNews Australia interviewed Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corp. about a ton of different things. They also touched on the issues of Australian immigration laws and while Murdoch defended the more multicultural and liberal immigration approach, but disapproved of extremists and while doing so, this 78-year old business tycoon gave them the finger!

I strongly suggest you watch the interview, if Rupert Murdoch is previously unknown or unfamiliar to you. It’s less than 40 minutes and gives a very good overview of the man and his ideology towards the world. For example, the thing that keeps on intrigueing me is the fact that he is constantly on the edge of things in the online world and has very strong opinions about it.

I also think that he is partially misunderstood for his views on paid news. I do agree he has a point in there. However, where he goes wrong in my opinion is that he defends the loyalty people have towards newspapers and thinks the world is partially wrong for not supporting loyalty or longer term subscriptions of news, be that in paper or digital format.

The problem is that while we believe paid news in their current format being served online do not work very well, Murdoch defends the future of news in the format of being commercial. I also believe the non-existence of a good digital push channel brings in challenges to the picture. Newspapers have been so successful in the past as they were one of the only “on-demand” ways of consuming news. It was up to you to decide when you wanted to enjoy them, compared to the television for example where you had to be in front of the box at a certain time to enjoy them.

I see that there is some future for paid news in the format that they are “pushed” or made more available to me than in their current format where I have to go and fetch them from a website, be that through a computer browser or its mobile counterpart. I’m thinking of something in the line of digital readers like Kindle and Nook.

However, I strongly suggest you take the time to watch this interview. Even though it does not go into great depth in many of the topics they cover, it does explain a lot of his views on the world and why he does things the way he does.