It’s very busy on Heat Street these days.
That’s the name of Rupert Murdoch/Fox News/NewsCorp’s new conservative website being set up former right wing British Member of Parliament Louise Mensch. (She’s married to the manager of Metallica, by the way.)
Whether or not she is actually a mensch is beside the point. Louise– who questioned Rupert and James Murdoch in Parliament during the hacking scandal, then went to work for them (haha)–has got a bigger problem. The url (website address) for the new site belongs to a piercings and clothing shop in South Carolina.
Heat Street is parked at www.heatstreet.com and is owned by a nice man named Lloyd Mitchell. He told me this was all news to him, and that no one, including Rupert Murdoch, has deigned to call him.
Mitchell sells t shirts, sandals, and offers a variety of skin piercings. Their website proclaims: All our piercing technicians not only meet – yet surpass – the standards for training & experience in the art of body piercing. Our piercers regularly attend training & receive certifications. Our facilities are of the highest calibre & are routinely inspected for safety.
Meanwhile. I’m told about 15 full time staffers are toiling away in the NewsCorp headquarters, practicing making a new HeatStreet.com site every day. It does sound a bit like the failed NewsCorp app The Daily, which has so faded into obscure memory that I had to Google it to remember what it was called.
NewsCorp could try www.heatst.com — which sort of looks like hearst.com– or heat-street.com with a hyphen, or heatstreet.net. But I fear that most of their clicks will go to Mr. Mitchell, and that a lot of conservative right wing readers will wind up with belly button and lip studs.
PS NewsCorp/FoxNews/Murdoch flack James Kennedy writes that HeatStreet is a NewsCorp only project, and that Fox News “has no relationship to Heat Street.” (Okay. It must be fun over there, splitting all those hairs.)
