12/4/07

Murdock Buys Beliefnet: Mazal Tov

To Becky Philips, charter member of Team Tzvee Bikers, and charter producer of the site, mazal tov on the sale of Beliefnet. You surely earned your rewards whatever they may be.

Owner Steve Waldman announced, "Dear Friends of Beliefnet, As you may have heard, Beliefnet has experienced a major “life event.” We’ve been acquired by Fox Entertainment Group, which is part of News Corp.
This is a thrilling moment for us. As you know, News Corp and Fox own media powerhouses such as Twentieth Century Fox, MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and Fox Network. What you may not know is that they also produce an enormous amount of high quality spirituality content: Zondervan, a Christian book publisher; HarperOne (formerly Harper San Francisco), a leading multifaith spirituality publisher; Harper Collins; Fox Faith, a creator of faith-based films; and the National Geographic Channel, which airs many terrific shows on religious history."

I'm no fan of Fox News so I have my reservations about where things go from here. We hope the new owners will keep their politics and religion separate. But here in the Teaneck Orthodox community that's not one of the American values that has much traction. And if you listen to Fox's Hannity for 5 minutes, you'd have to start an office pool to take bets on how long it will be before the new Beliefnet runs a series on why Hillary is evil according to the eight major religions of the world.

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