Contents
Guide
THE
MURDOCH
METHOD
Irwin Stelzer is a consultant on market strategy for US and UK industries. He worked closely with Rupert Murdoch for thirty-five years. He has a regular column in the Sunday Times and is an occasional contributor to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the New Statesman. He has received the ICAP Comment Award for Economics Commentator of the Year and has a doctorate in Economics from Cornell University. He has held positions at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cornell University and New York University, and been a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University.
Published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2018 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright Irwin Stelzer, 2018
The moral right of Irwin Stelzer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 575 4
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 400 9
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 402 3
Printed in Great Britain.
Credits for photo insert: plates EPA/EFE The Walt Disney Company.
Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ
www.atlantic-books.co.uk
For Cita
Who has made this book and much else possible
Im a strange mixture of my mothers curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mothers father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts
Rupert Murdoch, 2008
I would hope they [my children] would lead useful, happy and concerned lives with a very responsible view of what they should and are able to do according to their circumstances
Elisabeth Murdoch, circa 1989
I am a curious person who is interested in the great issues of the day and I am not good at holding my tongue
Rupert Murdoch, 2012
CONTENTS
Introduction:
Rupert Murdoch: The Man, His Method and Me
KEITH RUPERT MURDOCH
TIMELINE
1931 |
March | Keith Rupert Murdoch born |
1950 |
October | Goes up to Worcester College, Oxford |
1952 |
October | Father, Keith Arthur Murdoch, passes away. Rupert inherits fathers stake. The will is complicated, so the precise date of possession is difficult to pinpoint |
1953 |
Family approves of Rupert becoming managing director of Adelaide papers, News and Sunday Mail |
1956 |
Marries Patricia Booker |
1958 |
Daughter Prudence (now Prudence MacLeod) born |
1964 |
July | Launches The Australian, a serious, nation-wide broadsheet in Australia, and his first new title |
1967 |
Divorces Patricia Booker Marries Anna Torv (now Anna Murdoch Mann) |
1968 |
January | Acquires News of the World |
August | Elisabeth Murdoch born |
1969 |
September | Acquires The Sun, at the time a broadsheet |
1970 |
November | The first genuine Page Three girl appears in The Sun |
1971 |
September | Lachlan Keith Murdoch born |
1972 |
December | James Rupert Jacob Murdoch born |
1973 |
December | Acquires San Antonio Express, the News, and their combined Sunday paper. First US acquisition |
1976 |
November | Acquires New York Post |
1978 |
August | New York newspaper strike |
October | Author meets Murdoch for first time at birthday party for his wife Cita at Lutce restaurant in New York |
1981 |
February | Acquires The Times and The Sunday Times |
1983 |
November | Acquires Chicago Sun-Times |
1985 |
March | Rupert acquires 50 per cent of 20th Century Fox and the balance in September of that year |
September | Rupert becomes an American citizen |
1986 |
January | The Times and Sunday Times move to Wapping and strike begins |
1989 |
January | Acquires William Collins Publishers and combines it with Harper & Row, acquired a year earlier |
February | Sky Television launched |
1990 |
January | Purchases two Hungarian newspapers, Mai Nap and Reform |
1992 |
June | Rupert fires Steve Chao over performance at company conference in Aspen |
1993 |
September | Rupert claims satellites threaten dictatorships and is thrown out of China |
December | Rupert (Fox) acquires TV rights to NFL for four years for $1.58 billion |
1996 |
James Murdoch sells Rawkus Records to News Corp. in 1996 and joins the family firm |
October | Rupert launches Fox News Channel |
1998 |
May | Murdoch issues apology to Chris Patten for cancelling publication of and disparaging his book |
1999 |
|