MogulWatch:
Megalomania and the failure of convergence

Updated 2000.11.28

The year 2000 will go down in infamy as the season in which power-drunk media moguls wife-swapped, heaved off limbs, and embarrassed themselves with their rank incomprehension of online media. These are their stories.

1. Quebecor shuts down two newspaper Web sites, thereby losing the war of the clueless (July 19)
2. The convergence myth (Portage and Main version)
   Convergence is the Big Lie of the Internet, and it sure ain't worth $3.5 billion (August 1)
3. Pierre-Karl Péladeau, digging his own grave
   Why is Quebecor so anxious to undo everything it's achieved in Canadian online content? (August 8–9)
4. Oil and water in mergers and acquisitions
   Newspapermen buying cable companies and TV folk buying newspapers are pouring money down the drain (August 15)
5. Cutting off noses
   Quebecor fires online staff, for all the wrong reasons (August 18)
6. The convergence myth, Part II: Can even AOL get it right?
   Flush-with-cash rulers-of-the-universe AOL are betting a lot of money on TV/Internet convergence. And when they flub it, how will puny Canadians do better? (August 30)
7. The legitimate press clues in
   We've been saying it for weeks, but now the rest of the world is, too. Kind of (September 10)
8. Revelation: Print is content A phone company buys a raft of TV stations – and one newspaper. Is this progress? (November 28)

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