‘I am regarded as being on the lunatic fringe’

John Evans, the executive vice president of development for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation Ltd., listened to the two presentations preceding his and decided to throw away whatever shreds of a prepared presentation he might have had (which, by the way, was going to extol the virtues of PDAs). He did, however, have the decency to warn attendees before his rant — the rant that closed Digital World ‘92 — that he is “regarded as being on the lunatic fringe of my company.” Fair warning.

Lunatic or no, fact is that John Evans has made a number of singularly important contributions to the world of publishing. A lot of money was spent on products that he believed would be successful, and they usually were. One only need to look at the Village Voice and New York Magazine to see that Evans knows his stuff. So at Digital World, listening to people who he considers novices in publishing, talking about the next big thing in information delivery, struck him as “obscene.”

He held up Nathan Myhrvold’s “edited” version of the Wall Street Journal. Myhrvold had taken the first page of the paper, sliced out everything that was of no interest to him, and explained how that represented a personalized newspaper.

Evans took him to town. “This is a typical hacker’s approach to media,” he howled. “Let’s strip out all the revenue, let’s have that elitist egalitarian point of view, and then nobody makes any money on it so nobody can afford to print it, but nobody reads it so who cares!”

This is the problem with the state of interactive media and information services, he says. There is great concern about convergence and a meeting of the minds (the last two Digital World themes), but no compelling content. And even the type of content that has proven to sell boxes to the consumer, those addressing more “prurient interests,” are approached by technologists in a way that would never make a business in the publishing world, and is obviously not generating huge bucks for the technology companies, either.

For example, Evans created personal ads in the Village Voice, and developed an immense revenue stream based on it. Compuserve offered the same service, except that it considers itself an “information business” (whatever that is) — so it decided to give away the same service for free!

When magazines and newspapers are successful, it is because the revenue stream of advertisements, personal notices and classified ads are able to subsidize the content — news, art, features, etc. If you are indeed going to separate out each individual feature (as Myhrvold did with his Wall Street Journal), you need to put a price on it. “Pay-per-look,” Evans calls it.

What Evans objects to most about Myhrvold’s vision of publishing is that the process has completely overlooked the importance of editors and the editing process, which is what makes information enjoyable and even palatable today. Myrhvold may want to tear up the Journal, but it isn’t his, so he can’t.

Companies such as Evans’, he’s only too happy to remind us, not only edit the information, they collect the revenues, and they own the content. “So we’re not ‘converging’ with you guys,” he said. “We’re watching you come at us with your greedy little mouths going, ‘Oh, we would like to have a synergistic relationship with you.’ and we say ‘Piss off! Because we don’t need you right now.’”

If TV Guide is going to become electronic and interactive (and News Corp. owns TV Guide, the second most-recognized logo in America), it will only be when the reader, who may or may not want to perform “mega-manipulations”of the data, can get the “warm-and-fuzzy feeling [of] … good old, familiar TV Guide.” And not a moment before.

Practicing what he preaches. Evans may sound like a technophobe, but to make that assumption about him would be a grave mistake indeed. News Corp. is, in fact, sitting on some of the most potentially transforming technology that exists today. It owns a Menlo Park, CA-based company called Etak, an electronic navigation and mapping company. Etak makes auto navigation systems, but it also owns the world’s largest library of electronic, geocoded maps.

News Corp. is keeping fairly quiet about its long-term plans for geocoding, but Evans has spoken publicly about a future where your information and entertainment, as well as your phone calls, will be able to “follow you around.” At present, says Evans, News Corp. is licensing the technology to interested parties whose applications don’t cross boundaries into News Corp.’s territory. But when the time is right for Evans to move it into the mainstream, rest assured he will be ready.

David Baron, Janice Maloney