Internet Addiction: Let the Healing Begin

The current Neptune/North Node/Chiron lineup in Aquarius is a good time to get in touch with one’s addiction to TV, Internet, video games, and other forms of technology. I’m not making light of this issue. It’s a serious problem in our society. 

Interestingly, this is National TV-Turnoff Week. Click here for more information: http://www.tvturnoff.org/

Are you a Net addict? Take this quiz and find out:

http://www.netaddiction.com/resources/internet_addiction_test.htm

The questions really make you think. Here’s one I made up on my own:

Do you scream at your computer when Web pages are slow to load? (Be honest.)

In the spirit of recovery, I’m turning off my laptop right now and going to make the bed and get dressed!

Citizen Murdoch

I used to work for an Australian who had a chip on his shoulder. Let’s call him Stephen. He was convinced that he faced discrimination in New York media circles because, get this, he was Australian. I thought this was hilarious since so many Aussies, including News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, have done quite well for themselves in Gotham.

Stephen was an unlikely Australian. He drank sparingly, laughed little, and dressed very neatly. Even though he was born in a country where they like to say, “No worries, mate,” Stephen worried all the time. In essence, he was the opposite of the Aussie stereotype. Stephen had been a reporter for the New York Post, a paper owned by Murdoch, and was obsessed with his fellow countryman. (Yeah, I know, Murdoch’s got an American passport, but his Australian upbringing is apparent in little things like the name of Fox 5’s morning show, Good Day, New York,  as in “G’day, mate.”) 

I never found out what was behind Stephen’s obsession with Murdoch, and it never occurred to me to ask. My impression was that he thought the American media were giving the media mogul a free ride, not really questioning  how a publicly traded company was being run as a family business. On Wall Street, they would say that Stephen had some concerns about News Corp.’s “governance issues.” 

Stephen ended up at the Wall Street Journal, which was recently taken over by Murdoch. Now that’s irony, if you ask me. I can’t imagine that the self-hating Aussie is happy about Murdoch’s meddling with the WSJ‘s winning formula. That interference led to today’s resignation of Marcus Brauchli, the paper’s managing editor. Here’s a link to an AP story about Brauchli:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080422/wall_street_journal_editor.html?.v=11

Murdoch’s also been in the news the last couple of days for his plan to buy Newsday, the profitable Long Island tabloid that has been losing circulation under the stewardship of Tribune Co.  

Now, Murdoch has done so many things in his life, and News Corp. owns so many different properties that you could write a book. Others have, but I don’t have time for that right now.  I’m going to settle for a quickie astro reading.

Like some other present and former media moguls (John Malone, Michael Eisner), Murdoch is a Pisces. He was born Mar. 11, 1931 in Melbourne, Australia, at 11:55 p.m. His Sun is conjunct Mercury, the planet of communications, and those two Pisces planets make a favorable trine to a stellium of Jupiter, Pluto, and Mars in Cancer. All that Cancer usually means an emphasis on roots and family. Sure enough, Murdoch has expanded a business he inherited from his father and has involved his children in News Corp.’s operations.

What does Murdoch’s chart say at first glance? That he is intuitive, fortunate, expansive, and ruthless. As a Pisces, he has a knack for living his life in tune with the zeitgeist, doing things like marrying a Chinese woman, Wendi Deng, just as China is becoming a global economic player.

I don’t think anyone really knows Murdoch, except maybe his mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, who is still going strong at age 99. He’s got Moon in Sagittarius, and the Moon rules the women in his life. The moon is in the 12th house of the unconscious, which governs prisons, hospitals, and other institutions. I haven’t read all the Murdoch biographies, but I’d venture to say his mother has been the most influential person in his life. 

The Wiki says his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, died in 1952, while Murdoch was still in college.  I was also interested to learn that Dame Elisabeth is a tireless philanthropist who has championed such causes as improving conditions for prisoners, mental hospital patients, abandoned children, and addicts. Sounds like a 12th house Moon to me. Don’t you love astrology?

Here’s Murdoch’s chart, courtesy of Star IQ: http://www.stariq.com/Main/Articles/P0007881.HTM

Murdoch’s natal chart (a map of the planetary positions when he was born) is being lit up like Times Square by the current movements of the planets in the sky. He’s got transiting Pluto in Capricorn hanging around his Ascendant or rising. This is pushing him more heavily into business news. Some examples of this are the Dec. 13 acquisition of the WSJ,  the nation’s premier business paper, and the launch of Fox Business News on Oct. 15. Pluto didn’t move into Capricorn, which rules business, until January, but the timing is close enough for me. Murdoch is consolidating (Pluto) his position in financial media.

As electrical Uranus has made its way through Pisces, Murdoch has been awakened to the possibilities of the Internet, and News Corp. has gotten more interactive. As the company acquired the social networking site MySpace in July, 2005, for $580 million, transiting Uranus was trining Murdoch’s natal Jupiter. Oddly enough, $580 million is the amount that News Corp. is proposing to pay for Newsday. Maybe it’s Murdoch’s lucky number.

While my former boss Stephen may have believed that Murdoch was being let off easy by the media, that’s changing. Murdoch’s making enemies over at the Journal with his emphasis on shorter stories that appeal to the general public. He’s messing with a tried-and-true recipe developed by longtime WSJ managing editor Barney Kilgore (http://www.opinionjournal.com/about/kilgore.html), and the Journal’s defenders of the faith resent it.

The fears about Murdoch’s tabloid tendencies were behind an April Fool’s Day parody of the WSJ featuring a bare-breasted photo of conservative poster girl Ann Coulter (thanks to the wonders of PhotoShop). The satire was designed to skewer Murdoch’s conservative politics and his appeal to the lowest common denominator, as evidenced by the racy photos that appear in his British tabloids.

Here’s the link to the sendup: http://wsjparody.com/ 

In the small world department, the voice on the Web site that’s supposed to be Murdoch’s sounds like that of another former Australian boss of mine who also used to work for the Post, and no, I don’t think all Aussies sound alike. What kind of sheila do you think I am?

If you liked that sendup, here’s a funny riff on MySpace, another News Corp. property: http://americancomedynetwork.com/animation.html?bit_id=25239

O.K., back to business. On a macro level, Murdoch could run into some regulatory opposition to the Newsday acquisition because of the proximity of its Long Island base to the Post’s New York City territory. However, the Federal Communications Commission has been loosening up the laws regarding media ownership so maybe this won’t be a problem the way it might have in the old days.  

Certainly, there are a lot of people out there who think Murdoch’s global empire is beyond the control of any government or regulatory authority, and they’re probably right. With Saturn approaching Murdoch’s Virgo Midheaven, I think criticism of him is going to get louder. Will it bother him? Not in the least. That’s a great thing about being a Pisces. You can live in your own little (or in Murdoch’s case, big) world.

The Bad News about the Newseum

Even though I’ve been a working journalist for more than 30 years, I’m not a true news junkie. I can go cold turkey. I’m perfectly happy to go on vacation and not surf the Net, watch TV, or read the newspaper. In fact, that’s my idea of a perfect vacation. I have to give myself breaks from the onslaught of information (in the old days I would have called it “news” ) or I just burn out.

For a newsie, my sense of timing is a little off. I hate jumping on the bandwagon. I’m perfectly happy to be out of step with the masses, reading about the Civil War when everyone else is focused on World War II or delving deep into Thomas Jefferson’s life when the rest of the gang’s hot and bothered about John Adams.

So don’t be surprised to find me extolling a book that came out last year or dissecting a hurricane that happened nearly three years ago. Why? Because it’s my blog and I can do what I want to. No editor saying, “The competition had that story six weeks ago. Why do you want to write about it now?”

After that running start, which any Journalism 101 professor will tell you belongs in File 13, here’s the real lead: I’m just catching up with the brouhaha surrounding the reopening of the Newseum on Apr. 11. If you had asked me about the original Newseum, which I never visited, I would have told you that it was some outpost of USA Today in Virginia, basically Al Neuharth’s love child.

But after four years in the making and $450 million, the new improved Newseum wants to be a full-fledged member of the museum elite on Washington D.C.’s National Mall. On the eve of its opening, Slate ran a piece by Jack Shafer urging folks to boycott the press pavilion. Here’s the link: http://www.slate.com/id/2188802/ 

Besides noting the $20 admission fee, Shafer’s up in arms about what he calls the “fetishizing of trivial relics,” including the satchel, pencil, and eyeglasses belonging to reporter Mark Kellogg of the Bismarck Tribune, who was killed at Little Big Horn.

Hey, isn’t that what museums do? More to the point, that’s what our society does. Vogue wouldn’t have 800 pages in its September issue each year if we didn’t fetishize consumer products.

Putting Wonkette’s bedroom slippers and other media detritus under glass isn’t what troubles me about the Newseum. As a former typesetter who still likes the feel of newsprint in her hands, I’m worried about the future. Museums usually showcase things that don’t exist anymore, you know, like dinosaurs or the Roman Empire. If they’ve built a shining glass and steel monument to journalism on the Mall, it can only mean one thing: Media, as we know it, is on the verge of extinction.

By the way, I’m not the only newsie who has come to this conclusion. Check at this post at “The Future of News”: http://thefutureofnews.com/2008/04/11/dcs-new-newsoleum-is-the-perfect-monument-to-a-dying-profession/

No question about it: The barbarian bloggers aren’t at the gates; they’re in the newsroom. Strike that. They ARE the newsroom. Say good-bye to fact-checking, spelling, grammar, balance, fairness — that stuff’s so last millennium. 

With the prodigious amount of free content floating around the Web, some of it very well-written, it’s getting harder and harder for journalists to make a buck. I recently asked an editor how much I should bill him for some digital work I did and he informed me that it was customary not to pay contributors at this particular Web site.

Why else do you think I’m doing my best Sybil the Soothsayer (from the film “Network,” for those of you not familiar with the character) with an astrology blog? Folks actually want to pay me to do astrological readings. That’s becoming less true for my journalistic endeavors. As the Ice Age descends over the newsroom, I’m looking at my crystal ball, my tea leaves, my charts — anything to get a read on the future and some money in the bank.

So, on with the show! Let’s look at the Newseum opening chart, set for 9 a.m. on Apr. 11 in Washington D.C.

The talking points: Gemini rising and Mercury the chart ruler are perfect for a museum dedicated to the media. Sun/Mercury in Aries points to the self-aggrandizement that Shafer bemoans in the piece I’ve linked to above. Neptune in Aquarius sextile the Aries stellium, which also includes Venus in Aries — there’s some confusion about mission. I suspect there’s more glamour than substance here.

The real problem is a combative Moon/Mars conjunction in Cancer in the second house of resources. The Cancer planets square the Aries stellium in the 11th house of “hopes and dreams” (a catchall phrase if I ever heard one!) and oppose Jupiter in Capricorn, forming a nice T-square.  Who’s going to pay for all of this? Based on the Jupiter in Cap in the seventh house, the media elite of this country.

It’s a good thing the Newseum has such well-heeled patrons because with a $20 admission charge, they’re not going to get enough visitors to keep the lights on. Yes, there’s backing from the Freedom Forum, Neuharth’s group, and other media family foundations, but some benefactors are going to get fed up about the amount of money required to sustain this — dare I say it? — white elephant.

Most of the museums in Washington D.C. are funded by the government and your tax dollars, even the National Museum of the American Indian, which is part of the Smithsonian. Maybe Old Media needs to cut a deal with the Native Americans, who are using some of the stupendous profits from their casinos to build museums about tribal customs of yesteryear. If not a joint operating agreement, perhaps a reality TV show that takes place in the Newseum: American Media Mogul or Who Wants to be a Newspaper Owner?