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Murdoch puts faith in online religion

LinkedIn damned to hell

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Rupert Murdoch's global media omnibeast has bought itself a religious tentacle, according to reports.

News Corp will announce today it has paid an undisclosed sum for Beliefnet.com, a faith portal whose mission "is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness".

The site was founded in 1999, during the dotcom boom, and soldiered through the crash. MediaBistro.com, which broke news of the News Corp deal, reports that founder and editor-in-chief Steve Waldman will do nicely out of the deal.

Beliefnet boasts 3.1 million visitors per month and 7.6 million registered users.

Murdoch himself is a known God-botherer. In a rare personal interview in 1993 with Nicholas Coleridge for the book Paper Tigers, he said: "They say I'm a born-again Christian and a Catholic convert and so on. I'm certainly a practicing Christian, I go to church quite a bit but not every Sunday and I tend to go to Catholic church."

The news may disappoint Silicon Valley followers of the web 2.0 cult, who in recent weeks have been preaching unsubstantiated prophecies that said Murdoch would convert suit-friendly social network LinkedIn to his growing internet flock. They convinced themselves it would be a perfect fit with stockbroking rag the Wall Street Journal, which News Corp bought earlier this year.

Reuters tore down that false idol yesterday. ®

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Latest Comments

Corrupt hypocrite

Just what Christianity needs, yet another hypocritical, money-grabbing, self-serving, neocon-supporting right-wing nut-job declaring his born again Christian status and then continuing to be all of the above. I fail to see how anyone could be much farther from living in Christ's image than the likes of Murdoch.

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Destination

"He's going to hell"

He'd enjoy that too much. Send him to Heaven and make him squirm...

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Hell!

Hell: where Satan belches fire, and enormous devils break wind both night and day!

Hell: where the mind is never free from the torments of remorse, and your bottom never free from the pricking of little forks!

Hell: where the air is pungent with the aroma of roasted behinds!

Also, I picked the only icon related to fire: we need a "Hellfire and Damnation" icon. More Brimstone, please!

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