CEO DOSSIER
Newspapers were in Rupert’s blood and when he inherited his father’s business he took it and rapidly expanded it into a multi-billion dollar media empire. But there have been bumps along the way and the CEO of News Corp is now dividing the business into two separate companies.
early years
Rupert was born on March 11, 1931 on a farm in Melbourne Australia. His father was a well-known journalist and newspaper publisher, who owned Melbourne’s the Herald as well as the Courier-Mail in Brisbane and the News and Sunday Mail in Adelaide.
He attended a prestigious boarding school in Australia – Geelong Grammar, leaving in 1949 and going to the UK to study at Oxford University’s Worcester College. But in 1952, Rupert’s father died suddenly and he inherited the News and the Sunday Mail. He briefly worked with Lord Beaverbrook at the Daily Express in London before flying back to Australia to take charge of the newspapers in 1953, aged just 22.
In his role as boss, he threw himself into daily life at the papers, designing pages, writing headlines and transforming the News into a tabloid with a rocketing readership.
After three years Rupert started the process of building himself a media empire. In 1956 he bought the Sunday Times in Perth, giving the title a major overhaul. And in 1960 he bought the Mirror, an afternoon paper in Sydney, turning it from a struggling business to the city’s best-selling afternoon title. After cutting his teeth on his regional titles, he branched out into national newspapers by founding Australia’s first nationwide daily title – the Australian in 1965. In 1968 he moved to the UK and bought the Sunday tabloid The News of the World, before buying the daily tabloid The Sun, which at the time was struggling, a year later. Rupert used his formula of focusing on sex, crime and sport to boost circulation for both the titles.
Not content with getting to grips with the newspaper industry in the UK and Australia, he branched out in the U.S as well, buying the San Antonio News in Texas in 1973. The following year he founded a national tabloid called the Star before buying the New York Post in 1976.
As ceo
In 1979 Rupert created News Corporation, commonly known as News Corp, as a holding company for all his newspapers, taking on the role of CEO. He continued his global expansion throughout the next two decades, buying the UK broadsheets the Times and Sunday Times as well as the U.S. publications the Chicago Sun-Times, the Village Voice and New York magazine.
And in 1985 he started moving into television, buying Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and then several independent television stations which he consolidated into Fox Inc to make a television network. He then started buying up academic and literary publishing firms in the UK and U.S, putting them together to form HarperCollins in 1990.
In 1990, he also founded the television broadcasting firm STAR TV in Hong Kong. As well as television and publishing, Rupert has put a lot of money into sport. He is a part owner of the Los Angeles Kings NHL franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise and the Staples Center, as well as Fox Sports Radio and FoxSports.com.
Rupert’s strategy of expansion continued when in 2005 he broadened out into the internet by buying the owner of MySpace.com – Intermix Media. When he bought it for $580 million- $30 million more than had been offered by his rival Viacom’s Sumner Redstone, people thought he had paid too much. But Myspace’s membership quickly expanded ten-fold and Google then paid $900 million for the rights to advertise on the site. This caused Rupert to be hailed an internet visionary but he says: “the truth is, I'm just lucky and nimble.” However this luck didn’t last and the social network site struggled to keep up with its more popular rivals, prompting Rupert to sell it for just $35 million in June 2011.
Then in 2007 he bought Dow Jones, which owns the American newspaper the Wall Street Journal. By this point his empire included more than 100 newspapers, a movie studio and television network, satellite TV systems and a rapidly-expanding internet division.
Rupert is described as an opportunist who is skilled at spotting a good deal. But his power has not always made him popular and he has attracted a lot of criticism from the way he runs his business empire to his political viewpoint, which critics say overly influence his media outlets.
But he says he doesn’t believe Fox News is right-wing as people claim, saying: “If you look at our general news, do we put on things which favour the right rather than the left? I don't know. We don't think we do. We've always insisted we don't. I don't think we do.”
He adds: "We're very proud of what we do at all our papers. We make mistakes here and there. There's such a thing as a popular newspaper and an unpopular elite newspaper. They play different roles. We have both kinds. Just like we have the Fox network with ‘American Idol’ and ‘24’, and we also have the National Geographic Channel. It's hard for outsiders to understand that."
One of Rupert’s challenges is how to cope with the falling readership of traditional newspapers as more and more people choose to get their news online. He is putting time and effort into developing News Corp’s presence on the internet and is one of the few CEOs who regular takes to the social media site Twitter to express his views, although they can sometimes land him in hot water, with him having publicly to apologise after tweeting about the “Jewish-owned press”. Rupert says he started his Twitter account @rupertmurdoch "as a bit of a joke” in late 2011.
The year 2011 brought major problems for Rupert, with claims that the News of the World had been involved in phone hacking leading him to close down the newspaper in July 2011 and the Leveson inquiry was held in Britain to look into the behaviour of the press. This revealed some questionable things about News Corp including the way those working for Rupert lobbied the British Government over its deal to take over BskyB in 2010-11.
Despite the scandal still hanging over Rupert and News Corp he is determined the company will weather the storm and his son James will eventually take over his $50 billion empire.
In 2013 Rupert was in the middle of splitting News Corp into two separate publicly traded companies – one for publishing and the other for entertainment. The division of the company is due to be completed in June 2013 with the publishing division starting out with £1.7 billion in cash and no debts. The new publishing company will have five divisions – news and information services; digital real estate services; HarperCollins book publishing; Fox SportsAustralia's cable programming; and a miscellaneous group. The entertainment firm including News Corp’s movie and TV businesses will be known as Fox Group entertainment company.
Nevertheless, Rupert has not ruled out adding to his existing range of newspapers with rumours saying he is looking at buying something new, possibly the Los Angeles Times.
Away from work
Rupert has been married three times. His first marriage to Patricia Booker from 1956 to 1965 resulted in a daughter Prudence. In 1967 he married again, having four children with his second wife Anna Torv. But after more than three decades of marriage, the couple divorced in 1999 and just 17 days after it was finalised, he married his third wife, Wendi Deng. The couple have two children together.
Rupert has received attention for his right-wing political views and in 2010 News Corp donated $1 million each to both the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the 2010 American midterm elections.
In own words
On his upbringing:
"I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man's home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other."
On life in the media:
“If you're in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community and I can't imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to."
On the ups and downs of a long career:
"It's been a long career, and I've made some mistakes along the way. We're not all virgins."
"I'm not looking for a legacy, and you'll never shut up the critics. I've been around 50 years. When you're a catalyst for change, you make enemies — and I'm proud of the ones I've got."
