FOLIO: To Murdoch - 'What's Next?' (Rupert Murdoch Acquires Ziff-Davis' Business Magazines)

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FOLIO: Let's begin simply enough. Why the departure into trade books, something you had stayed away from for a long time, if not forever?

RM: I've never stayed away from them deliberately. We'd always seen it as a great business, we simply had no way to get into it. This was an opportunity.

FOLIO: You had opportunities before. Was this a special opportunity? And what made it so?

RM: It's a very special group, it's a group that really dominates in the travel industry. We'd been offered smaller groups before that had bits and pieces all over the shop, which were good, but this seemed to be a very good one. We think it's got a great future.

FOLIO: Were you most attracted to the Ziff buy because of the industries it was in, or because of the timing in general?

RM: A lot of people claim they have 10-year plans or five-year plans or something. But basically, the most successful businesses are opportunistic, and you take your opportunities when they come. We went into it because it was there. We paid as much as we did because we thought the publications were outstandingly good and capable of further development--outside of telecommunications and computers, travel is the fastest growing industry in the world. So we saw it had a lot of things going for it.

FOLIO: Do you see the Ziff-Davis acquisition as just a $350 million foray--if there is such a thing--into trade magazine journalism? Or do you see it as a …