Jeff Jarvis takes the Murdoch debate to new levels.

Jeff Jarvis proclaims that Murdoch will fail this time.  He doesn't offer a business rationale.  Instead he goes along with the "crowd" to insult Murdoch by saying that his success and failures are due to lucky bets and by implication - no particular talent, smarts, etc.:

"That’s the essence of Murdoch: balls. It’s the essence of the culture of News Corp., which I learned from working there (at TV Guide): Australian macho seat-of-the-pants instant decision making.

That is the secret to Murdoch’s success. It is also the secret to his failure: Sometimes his balls land on red, sometimes on black. Murdoch plays the odds but he does it by making big bets."

In the comments, we make an appeal to Jeff (which we're pretty sure he won't respond to):

Jeff, if you are right, what are the implications? "What is" will continue to evolve in the same direction:

• Content creators - small or large - work as slaves for a master controller of all information.
• Art and literature are cut up into bits of data so an algorithm can tell an individual what they will like. 
• When individuals only consume what they like, our society, culture, and politics are more and more polarized.

How did we get here?  Because pricing and marketing "ideas" is really hard:

• The "established" media world avoided the challenge by generating revenues from the derivative value of "ideas" - selling exposure to the eyeballs "ideas" attract and by selling "access".
• "New" media has continued to avoid the elephant in the room. Follow the money: investors are not putting money in original "ideas".  Investors have been betting on taking share of existing ad$ and lowering costs by making unlimited numbers of copies of archived content. As Tom Foremski says the economic impact is deflationary.
  

It doesn't take "balls" to go along with other publishers or programmers (who still believe in investing serious dollars in people who produce quality content) and not enter a market where there is no way to breakeven.  It is just common sense. 

It doesn't take "balls" to threaten to walk away when you are losing in a negotiation and cut your losses.  This is business 101.

And it doesn't take "balls" to insult people, reverse or otherwise.

It takes "balls" to just do it better. 

The person at Time Inc. who introduced HBO as a paid movie channel, when all the "experts" said it would fail, had the conviction to pay people to deliver a quality product that merits a premium price. The reward is being one of few media brands with increasing revenues and profits in today's market that everyone would be proud to work for.