The Man Who Owns the News

CONTENTS

 

Title Page

 

Dedication

 

Acknowledgments

 

Prologue: His Message

 

Chapter One: The Butterfly Effect

 

Chapter Two: Around the Corner

 

Chapter Three: The Throwback

 

Chapter Four: Opposing Families

 

Chapter Five: The Outsider

 

Chapter Six: His Art

 

Chapter Seven: The Eighties—Business Guys

 

Chapter Eight: It’s a Tabloid World

 

Chapter Nine: Who’s the Boss?

 

Chapter Ten: Rupertism

 

Chapter Eleven: The Nineties—The Amazing Mr. M.

 

Chapter Twelve: Rupert in Love

 

Chapter Thirteen: The Ecology

 

Chapter Fourteen: Dynasty

 

Chapter Fifteen: Putting the Deal to Bed

 

Epilogue: The Proprietor

 

Endnotes

 

Bibliography

 

Also by Michael Wolff

 

Copyright

 

For my mother
the first newspaper person in our family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It’s important to get lucky when you write a book. My first stroke of good fortune happened when my daughter Elizabeth introduced me to her colleague Leela de Kretser, a reporter at the
New York Post
. My next stroke was that Leela was extremely pregnant and looking for a job with more flexible hours for after her baby’s birth. My next was that before the
Post,
Leela had been a reporter at the
Herald Sun,
Murdoch’s paper in Melbourne, where she grew up. An Aussie who’s worked for two Murdoch papers to help with the research for a book about Murdoch—that’s striking gold. My good luck has again and again been compounded by her keen perceptiveness about all things Murdoch, her fine-tuned interviewing skills, her in-the-trenches knowledge of the news business, and her unflagging humor. In twelve months we have done more than 120 interviews together, crossed Australia, and sat for more than fifty hours with the book’s subject. It may take an Australian to know one. Leela has talked out every aspect of the book with me, been as acute an analyst of News Corp.’s customs as anyone I’ve consulted, and somehow made all the trains of this project run on time. This book rests as much on her shoulders as my own—the mistakes will have undoubtedly come in those instances where I ignored her warnings and advice.

My friend of twenty years, Christopher Silvester, a Fleet Street diarist of long standing, helped track down old Murdoch hands in London, convince a wide assortment of Murdoch’s current British friends and foes to chat about him, assemble the surprisingly large body of Murdoch literature, skillfully conduct some of the notable background interviews for the book, and read the manuscript with patience and a keen eye.

Simon Dumenco, who may well have edited as many words of mine as any editor has for any writer, read this manuscript with the greatest care and offered the wisest of counsel, saving me from countless instances of excess and embarrassment.

This project began in the summer of 2007 in a column I wrote for
Vanity Fair
about the Dow Jones takeover. My
VF
colleague Doug Stumpf was the first to see the possibilities for this material as the basis of a book and urged me forward.
VF
’s editor, Graydon Carter, provided some of the initial insights that form the portrait of a new and evolving Murdoch. All of my colleagues at the magazine have been extraordinarily supportive of the project—and tolerant of my obsession with KRM.

My editor at Random House, Phyllis Grann, and her colleagues Steve Rubin, Bill Thomas, David Drake, Kathy Trager, and Jackeline Montalvo have been enthusiastic, discerning, and smart publishers—and fast, too, turning around a complicated manuscript on a relative dime. Their colleagues in London, Gail Rebuck and Dan Hind, have also worked with speed and good humor. Dan deserves special thanks for helping me through that most galling, pernicious, and absurd literary process: a British libel read.

And then there is Andrew Wylie, my agent. I called Andrew about the possibility of doing a book involving Murdoch and Dow Jones on a Friday afternoon in August 2007. Before the following Friday he had helped shape a proposal, conducted an auction, and scored me a publisher. Watching him work that week was one of the most awesome things I’ve seen in thirty years of trying to find someone who knows what they’re doing in the book business.

This book, in its twelve months from inception to completion, has depended on many hands. That includes Danit Lidor, Jackie Cook, Mark Bowker, Lisa Payton, Kim Carollo, Kate Hammer, Rehaneh de Kretser, Jennifer Fishbein, Sheldon Gravesande, and Genevieve Gorta, who did the transcribing of hundreds of hours of interviews. It also includes Michelle Memran, my
Vanity Fair
colleague, who with Marni Hanel, Joanne Gerber, Danit Lidor, and Althea Chang fact-checked the manuscript.

None of this would have been possible without the singular cooperation of this book’s subject, who not only was (mostly) a patient and convivial interviewee but also opened every door I asked him to open. He has been as helpful in facilitating this book as I can imagine any CEO ever being with a writer who owes him nothing. Indeed, he asked for nothing in return for his openness and cooperation. Likewise, News Corp. executives in New York, Los Angeles, London, Melbourne, and Sydney have been as generous and expansive in discussing their boss as I might have hoped—all of them being as fascinated by him as I am. Members of the Murdoch family—wife Wendi, daughters Prudence and Elisabeth, sons Lachlan and James, sons-in-law Matthew Freud and Alasdair MacLeod, sisters Janet Calvert Jones and Ann Kantor, nephew Matt Handbury, and mother, the remarkable Dame Elisabeth—have made the time to help me and each has been thoughtful, straightforward, and in almost every case uncommonly perceptive about their family, the family business, and, not least of all, the subject at hand. In the end, however, only Dot Wyndoe, Rupert Murdoch’s personal assistant for more than forty years, could be reliably counted on to schedule a meeting, supply a specific piece of information, or locate an address—she’s made everything so much easier.

Gary Ginsberg, News Corp.’s executive vice president, global marketing and corporate affairs, has been unfailingly helpful throughout this process. And while I have—rather often, I’m afraid—deviated from his guidance, disagreed with his views, and, I suspect, undermined his interests, he has been, and I hope will remain, a good friend.

Andrew Butcher, who joined News Corp. as a copyboy straight out of high school and rose to be a longtime spokesman for the company, has been an invaluable guide into the News Corp. culture. He has in too many instances to count made sense of what at News has not seemed to make any sense at all. This book is vastly smarter for his having shared his insights.

Dow Jones executives, both past and present, along with many
Wall Street Journal
staffers have been extremely forthcoming with time and information. Members of the Bancroft family, all of whom have spoken off the record, have been keen to have me understand the complicated currents and diverse characters within the family, as well as the real story of the takeover, so often very different from the way it was told, not least of all by their own paper.

Everybody in my family has not just lived all the details of my year with Rupert Murdoch, but has offered some pretty good advice (unsolicited or not).

And it is not just my family who has endured this book and pitched in when needed. Janon Fisher, Leela’s husband and a newspaper reporter, has shared insights and extended great patience. Chris de Kretser, in Melbourne, Leela’s father and a newspaperman for more than forty years, sat up over many nights reading the manuscript with an eagle eye, catching all sorts of errors of fact and carelessness.

The following people have been interviewed for this book, have shared valuable information about its subject, or have offered useful advice about its creation. I owe them, as well as numerous others who have asked to remain anonymous, a great debt:

Col Allan, editor in chief,
New York Post;
Jesse Angelo, managing editor,
New York Post
; Ken Auletta,
New Yorker
staff writer; Vicky Barnsley, CEO, HarperCollins UK; Richard Beattie, attorney for Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, LLP; Emily Bell, director of digital content for Guardian News and Media; Simon Bax, former chief financial officer of Fox Filmed Entertainment; Tony Blair, former prime minister of the United Kingdom; Mark Booth, former CEO, BSky B; Maggie Brown, British journalist; Charlie Burgess, Fleet Street editor; Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp.; Michael Costa, media banker, Merrill Lynch; Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the
Wall Street Journal;
Gary Davey, former CEO, Star TV; Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of IAC/InterActive Corp.; Matthew d’Ancona, editor,
Spectator
magazine; Jeremy Deedes, former managing director of the Telegraph Group; John Dolgen, former chairman, Paramount Pictures; Sir Rod Eddington, director of News Corp.; Karen Elliott House, former publisher of the
Wall Street Journal
; Edward Jay Epstein, author; David Faber, CNBC chief correspondent; Philip Falcone, senior managing director, Harbinger Capital Partners; Ivan Fallon, chief executive, Independent News and Media UK; Steve Fishman,
New York
magazine writer; Jonathan Foreman, former
New York Post
reporter; Michael Fuchs, former head of HBO; Michael Garin, a founder of Lorimar Telepictures; Stephen Glover, British journalist and one of the founders of the
Independent
; Roy Greenslade, media columnist and commentator, the
Guardian
; Richard Greenfield, Wall Street media analyst at Pali Research; James C. Goodale, former general counsel and vice chairman of the New York Times Company; James Harding, editor in chief,
Times
of London; Bert Hardy, former chief of News International; John Hartigan, chairman and CEO of News Limited; Tony Hendra, author and humorist; Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones; Alan Howe, former
Sunday Herald Sun
editor; John Huey, editor in chief, Time, Inc.; Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor in chief of the Huffington Post; Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s former press secretary; Richard Ingrams, co-founder and former editor of
Private Eye
; Jay Itzkowitz, former senior corporate lawyer at Fox Entertainment; Michael Jackson, television and news media executive; Sir Simon Jenkins, columnist, the
Guardian
, former editor of the
Times
of London and the
Evening Standard
; Lon Jacobs, News Corp. general counsel; Michael Jones, former political editor of the
Sunday Times
; Peter Kann, former CEO, Dow Jones; Trevor Kavanagh, former political editor of the
Sun;
Sir Chips Keswick, former Murdoch banker at Hambros Bank; Robert Kindler, vice chairman for investment banking at Morgan Stanley; Jonathan Knee, Wall Street banker; Andrew Knight, director of News Corp.; Phillip Knightley, author of
The First Casualty
and former
Sunday Times
reporter; Ed Kosner, former editor of
New York
magazine; Dominic Lawson, former editor of the
Sunday Telegraph
; James B. Lee Jr., vice chairman, JPMorgan Chase; Joanne Lipman, former
Wall Street Journal
editor; Sir Nick Lloyd, former editor of
News of the World
; Frank Luntz, political consultant; Brian MacArthur, former editor at the
Times
of London and the
Sunday Times;
Stephen Mayne, Crikey founder; Tom McGrath, entertainment and media executive, former chief operating officer of the Viacom Entertainment Group; Bill Mechanic, former CEO and chairman of Fox Studios; John Micklethwait, editor of the
Economist;
Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor in chief of the
Sun
; Piers Morgan, former editor in chief of the
News of the World
and the
Daily Mirror
; John Motavalli, author of
Bamboozled at the Revolution;
John Nallen, News Corp. deputy CFO; Andrew Neil, former editor in chief,
Sunday Times;
Mark Oliver, media consultant, CEO, Oliver and Ohlbaum Associates; Norm Pearlstine, chief content officer at Bloomberg; M. Peter McPherson, former chairman of the board of Dow Jones; David Penberthy, Sydney
Daily Telegraph
editor; Chapman Pincher,
Daily Express
reporter; Mario Platero, U.S. editor,
Il Sole 24 Ore
; Joyce Purnick, reporter for the
New York Times
and reporter at the
New York Post
at the time of the Murdoch takeover; Jeff Randall, business reporter for the
Daily Telegraph
and former editor at the
Sunday Times;
Jane Reed, director of Times Newspapers Limited; William Rees-Mogg, former editor of the
Times
of London; Arthur Siskind, former News Corp. general counsel; Andrew Ross Sorkin, business reporter for the
New York Times
; Roger Smith, Wall Street analyst and former Warner Communications executive; Michael Schrage, former
Washington Post
media business reporter; Malcolm Schmidtke, former editor of the
Sunday Age
; Stanley Shuman, managing director of Allen and Company LLC; Anne Spackman, editor in chief, Times Online,
Times
of London; Patrick Spain, CEO of HighBeam Research; Rob Spatt, attorney for Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, LLP; Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the
Wall Street Journal;
Irwin Stelzer, economist and Murdoch confidant; Cita Stelzer, research associate, Hudson Institute; Andrew Steginsky, fund manager; Peter Stoddard, former editor of the
Times
of London; Robert Thomson, editor in chief, the
Wall Street Journal,
former editor in chief, the
Times
of London; Richard Tofel, former
Dow Jones
senior executive; Donald Trelford, former editor in chief of the
Observer;
Rebekah Wade, editor in chief, the
Sun
; Jonathan Wald, senior vice president for business news, CNBC; Lord Wakeham, former British MP; Jann Wenner, founder of
Rolling Stone;
Francis Wheen,
Private Eye;
Robert Wiesenthal, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Sony Corporation of America; Charlie Wilson, former editor of the
Times
of London; Petronella Wyatt, reporter for the
Daily Mail,
daughter of Murdoch confidant Woodrow Wyatt; David Yelland, former editor of the
Sun
; Richard Zannino, former CEO, Dow Jones; Mortimer Zuckerman, proprietor of the New York
Daily News.