The Man Who Owns the News (59 page)

Elisabeth disappears on a Vespa:
Petronella Wyatt interview, November 12, 2007.

Elisabeth gets into Stanford:
Elisabeth Murdoch interview, November 15, 2007.

Elisabeth “has some things to work out…”:
Mathew Horsman, “Sky: The Inside Story: Bowing Out to the Inevitable,”
Guardian,
November 10, 1997.

Murdoch children in New York
: Geraldine Brooks, “Murdoch,”
New York Times Magazine
, July 19, 1998.

Lachlan’s lack of a job:
Interviews with News Corp. executives on both the East and West Coasts.

James Murdoch:
Annette Sharp, “The Diary,”
Sun-Herald
(Sydney), June 18, 2000; Raymond Snoddy, “The Saturday Profile: James Murdoch,”
Independent
, August 6, 2005; Valerie Block, “The Dutiful Son: Spare Murdoch Heir, a High-Tech Kid, Waits Patiently to Rotate into New Post,”
Crain’s New York Business
, August 10, 1998; “A Grass-Roots Murdoch,”
New Yorker
, September 16, 1996, 44; “Like Father, Like Son,”
Economist
, November 8, 2003, 64; Madden Normandy, “James Murdoch,”
Advertising Age
, January 26, 2004; “Young Murdoch’s Asian Adventure,”
Ad Age Global
, May 2001, 30; Raymond Snoddy, “Murdoch Son Attacks BBC’s Global Claims,”
Times
(London), August 28, 2000.

Tunku Varadarajan on James:
“Bad Company Rupert Murdoch and his son genuflect before Chinese communists,”
Wall Street Journal,
March 26, 2001.

James is the “real thing”:
Interviews with News Corp. executives.

James as recluse:
James Robinson, “James Murdoch: Triumph of the Family Man,”
Observer,
December 9, 2007.

James’ wedding vows:
Rohm,
The Murdoch Mission: The Digital Transformation of a Media Empire
, 41.

Excerpt from Charlie Rose
: “A Conversation with Rupert Murdoch,”
The Charlie Rose Show
, July 20, 2006.

Wendi and Murdoch fight:
Interviews with News Corp. executives.

$45 per share projection from Zannino:
Interviews with Dow Jones executives and Bancroft family members.

Lee meets Murdoch and the boys at Sun Valley:
Jimmy Lee interview, October 15, 2007.

Who’s paying Lee’s fee:
Richard Zannino interview, November 1, 2007.

Links Club meeting:
Interviews with Lee, Murdoch, and Zannino.

CHAPTER
5

John Nallen updates the book:
John Nallen interview, January 7, 2008.

JPMorgan Chase meeting:
Interviews with Murdoch, Lee, and Zannino.

Zannino as a seller:
Zannino denies he was looking to sell the company and insists that he was trying to increase shareholder value—and succeeding—on the basis of the plan he had set forth not long after he took the reins as CEO. “Jimmy calls me after that lunch and says, ‘What should we do next?’ And I said, ‘There’s nothing to do. The family’s not a seller, Rupert’s not a buyer, and, you know, we’re not talking about it at lunch.’ We’re working the plan.” Rich Zannino, November 1, 2007.

Jamie Dimon stops by:
Interviews with Murdoch, Lee, and Zannino.

Murdoch doesn’t look back:
Wendi Murdoch notes: “I think also, he’s not sentimental about things. Most people, if something happens, they feel depressed. Urgh. He’s like, he feels bad for the day and then…I remember with DirecTV that was so close. He didn’t get it, he did feel bad, but the next day he was…We didn’t know until dinnertime when we saw…and then we went to Col Allan’s house for curry dinner. Then next day he started working on the lobbying for Washington. I think he thrives on stress. Rather than feel sorry for himself, he was thinking what to do next. You know, if he didn’t get it, it doesn’t bother him that much.” April 28, 2008.

Who is the establishment:
Murdoch interview, October 10, 2008.

Hunting story:
Chapman Pincher interview, July 2008: “Harry Hyams, the property developer, has a country house and estate called Ramsbury Manor, in Wiltshire. Probably the most beautiful house that’s liveable in, it’s not all that enormous. He has made it even more superb by restoring it. He has a pheasant shoot there. I was a very keen pheasant shot. Harry had six shoots a year and he used to ask me to them all. You had some very interesting people there, such as Grand Prix racing driver Graham Hill, all sorts of people from all walks of life. He told me that this fellow Rupert Murdoch would be coming with his wife, Ann[a], who I remember as being rather tall and blond. She didn’t have a lot to say for herself, but I thought she was very nice. He turned up in brand-new shooting suit, with knickerbockers—you could see it was absolutely brand-new—and what looked to me, as an old hand, like an absolutely brand-new twelve-bore, side-by-side gun. I wondered how much shooting he’d done, because they don’t have that kind of shooting in Australia. These were driven birds and some of the drives were very special. There were a couple of drives called the plantation drives. The birds were very high and very difficult. They weren’t only high but they were dropping. Rupert remembered having met me, and he said, ‘Would you keep telling me what to do? I don’t really know what to do. I’ve never done this before.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ So we lined up and he happened to be drawn next to me, or maybe I got Harry to put him next to me. Anyway, we were next to each other. He said, ‘What do we do?’ I said, ‘When the birds come over, you’ll find they’re very difficult. But the first rule is not what to shoot at, it’s what not to shoot at. You don’t shoot at your neighbor’s birds. You don’t shoot at birds that are going over me and clearly going to come to me, and you don’t shoot birds that are going to come to your neighbor on the other side. The next thing is try and imagine that you’re shooting slightly in front of the birds.’ Well, the birds came over him, there were quite a lot of them, and we all had a rip-roaring drive. They were very difficult. He didn’t disturb a feather, didn’t hit one. By the end of the day he was knocking them down. He was that sort of guy. You could see right away, if he wanted to he would make a good shot. A lot of people say, ‘Bugger it! I can’t do this.’ But not Rupert. By the end of the day he was acquitting himself quite well. We were all rather impressed. Quite honestly, I don’t think he’d fired at a pheasant before in his life. The only other thing I remember about that conversation was that he bellyached to me, when we were walking together between drives, about the attitude of the British people towards him and particularly towards his wife. I don’t know that he used the word ‘snooty,’ but whatever the Australian equivalent of that word was. I think he hinted that he would get the hell out of Britain because he didn’t like the attitude of the Poms [Australian slang term for the English].”

News of the World
deal:
Shawcross, 103–17.

Bert Hardy retained:
Bert Hardy interview, October 4, 2007.

“I don’t agree it’s sleazy for a minute…”:
Leapman,
Barefaced Cheek,
50.

Murdoch and Frost interview:
Frost,
David Frost: An Autobiography
.

“We’ve had enough of your hospitality”:
Shawcross,
Rupert Murdoch,
117.

Murdoch on Frost
: “I swore I would never, ever have anything to do with Frost on any level in any way and I made it my, for at least twenty years I never spoke to him. He’d be all over me at parties, ‘Oh, Rupert…’ I’ve never had a one-on-one with him since and I’ve always been very cold to him, but I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to have social conversation. But I thought he was such an arrogant bastard, a bloody bugger…I feel like saying I’ll still get the bastard one day, but he’ll die before I get him.” October 10, 2007.

Murdoch on Cudlipp and Bartholomew:
Murdoch interview, October 10, 2007.

Harry Guy Bartholomew:
The
Mirror
editor was also renowned for hitting his editor Cecil Jones over the head with an eight-foot plank of wood. Few realized—until “Bart” showed them, falling over himself laughing—that the plank was made out of balsawood. “To the Niminy Piminy,”
Time
, September 28, 1953.

Private Eye: “Well, they were almost a sort of Establishment in a funny sort of way, in a strange English way, with somewhat more humor, but still you know…I laughed at it.” Murdoch interview, October 10, 2007.

Anna’s car accident:
Bert Hardy interview, October 4, 2007; “In Brief: Car Death Verdict,”
Times
(London), January 10, 1973.

Merrill Lynch’s analysis of $45:
Bancroft family sources.

Zannino’s breakfast:
Interviews with Murdoch and Zannino.

Zannino tells Dow Jones executives:
Interviews with Zannino and Michael Elefante, January 25, 2008, and Peter Kann, May 14, 2008.

CHAPTER
6

No women on News Corp. board:
Murdoch told
Sun
editor Rebekah Wade that he was resistant to putting women on the News Corp. board before appointing Natalie Bancroft because he thought women talked too much. Wade conversation with author, May 8, 2008.

Murdoch dinner at Milos:
Rod Eddington interview, February 25, 2008.

Bancroft family meeting:
Interviews with Bancroft family members.

“What the hell’s the matter with my Red Sox?”:
Susan Pulliam, Dennis K. Berman, Matthew Karnitschnig, and Sarah Ellison, “Dynasty’s Dilemma: For Bancrofts, Dow Jones Offer Poses Challenge—Murdoch Bid Tests Family’s Cohesion; Sell ‘Grandpa’s Paper’?”
Wall Street Journal,
May 12, 2007.

Peter McPherson:
M. Peter McPherson interview, May 27, 2008.

Irv Hockaday and Harvey Golub as logical candidates:
Interviews with Dow Jones executives and Bancroft family members.

Howard Squadron is a minor politico:
Howard Squadron briefly ran for a West Side seat in Congress but withdrew because he said that politics would be too demanding for him as a single father. (His wife had died in 1967 of an aneurysm, leaving him to bring up three young children.) William Glaberson, “Howard M. Squadron, 75, Influential Lawyer, Dies,”
New York Times
, December 28, 2001.

Ed Downe Jr.:
Ed Downe Jr., along with Marc Rich, was pardoned by President Clinton in his last days of office.

Murdoch is introduced to Felker by Katharine Graham:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Murdoch on his fallout with Clay Felker:
“I met him very early on. He was a friend. And I was very sad about our falling-out…Looking back, I was sorry it ended up a hostile takeover and so on, which it wasn’t in the sense that Clay was talking to me about me buying it. I think he was having a bet each way because he was fighting with his board. The truth was his board had over 50 percent of the shares. And they came to me, and they had bankers like Stan Shuman, the board came to me and said, ‘Look, we know you’ve been talking to Clay because Clay’s been telling us, reporting his conversations. And he won’t make up his mind. But we’ll tell you one thing for certain—we are going to sell. So you can buy or miss, whichever, you know.’ I thought about it for twenty-four hours and thought, ‘Okay, I’m sure I could make it up with Clay. The best thing is to do it and then over time he will calm down and we can talk it over to carry it forward.’ He reacted negatively, rushed to Katharine Graham. And then one evening in my apartment when it was all being signed, she called and said, you know, and then when she saw what we had it…and I made the worst business decision of all, it was a pretty small business decision, but a bad one. She said, ‘Well, would you sell
New West
?’ which was Clay’s idea of doing something in California that was losing money. And I think she was buying something for Clay to go to, but everything was too far gone. And I said, ‘No, I think it’s gone too far, I’m sorry.’ She said, ‘Okay.’…That was a cross to bear for about two or three years before we finally sold it off.” Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Murdoch chooses schools:
Murdoch interview, September 22, 2007.

Dalton’s advantage:
Murdoch would also meet Van Gordon Sauter through the Dalton School when Sauter’s stepson attended that school with Lachlan Murdoch. Murdoch interview, October 23, 2007.

Dolly Schiff had a crush on Clay: New York
magazine sources.

Murdoch hires Stan Shuman:
Former World Bank president—and fellow Australian—James Wolfensohn was Murdoch’s original banker in New York. Wolfensohn said he could no longer represent him, so Murdoch turned to Stan Shuman. Stan Shuman interview, September 6, 2007.

Elaine’s:
William Claiborne and Robert G. Kaiser, “Takeover in Gotham: How a Rich Australian Publishing Baron Wrested Control of
New York
Magazine,”
Washington Post,
January 9, 1977; “Bacon and Eggs at Elaine’s and Other Tales of Rupert Murdoch’s Noisy Arrival on the New York Media Scene,”
Advertising Age,
March 29, 1999.