Categories: OLD Media Moves

News Corp. has not liked Mossberg and Swisher contract from beginning

News Corp., which is severing ties with AllThingsD founders and longtime tech journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the end of the year, objected to the terms of the journalists’ contract soon after the media company took over the operation in 2007, reports Edmund Lee of Bloomberg News.

Lee reports, “Mossberg and Swisher together take slightly more than 50 percent of AllThingsD’s conference revenue, including ticket sales and sponsorships, according to people familiar with the business, who asked not to be identified because the terms are confidential. The contract was negotiated years before News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch acquired AllThingsD as part of his Dow Jones purchase, and he and other executives bristled at the arrangement, people with knowledge of their thinking said.

“The split leaves News Corp. without two of its highest-profile business journalists, while sending Mossberg and Swisher in search of new partners and investors. The pair said yesterday that they would have a new website and conference business starting Jan. 1 under a different corporate structure. Mossberg and Swisher have spoken to Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal as a potential backer, according to one person.

“Swisher, who has served as co-executive editor of the AllThingsD site with Mossberg, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Ashley Huston, a spokeswoman for News Corp., declined to comment on the company’s contracts with Mossberg and Swisher. NBCUniversal’s Cameron Blanchard also declined to comment.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.