A new biography of Rupert Murdoch is in the offing, and with William Shawcross chosen to write it, there’s a likelihood it will see the light of day.
It’s 34 years since his last full bio – a fair swag, even in the life of the 95-year-old. An update was published for the US market in 1997 under Simon & Schuster’s Touchstone imprint; unauthorised, although Shawcross noted in an introduction, “Murdoch agreed to talk to me”.
Now Sir William is reported to have been granted “wide-ranging access” for a new book, which follows the best-selling – and variously-titled ‘Rupert Murdoch: Ringmaster of the Information Circus’, or ‘The Digger's Tale: Rupert Murdoch’, or simply ‘Rupert Murdoch’, as the tired Pan paperback on my bookshelf proclaims itself (on the cover, at least).
It will be published under the Murdochs’ HarperCollins imprint.
In a 1992 review of the first volume for the UK Independent, Robert Harris recalled that former Times and Sunday Times editor Harold Evans had found himself chief executive of a publisher that held the rights to a Murdoch autobiography… until it didn’t, the change of circumstances reported to involve the return of a US$1 million advance. Which, according to Harris, is where Shawcross – “who had already been working on a biography of Murdoch for more than a year, without the co-operation of his subject” – came in.
Harris commented that he found “something faintly compromised” about the published book, feeling “the shadow of Murdoch falling heavily across the page”.
But he admits, to build his empire, Murdoch had “pushed his health to the edge of destruction and his fortune to the brink of bankruptcy.
“One would have to be pretty mealy-mouthed not to admire the sheer human force and spirit that has gone into such an enterprise,” he added.
Will the “seduced” Shawcross be as “industrious” and “honest” (Harris’ words) with the update? We wait to see.
And yes, there’s some updating to do.
Like noting a change of partners: In 1992 Murdoch was still married to his second wife, Anna Torv, from whom he divorced in 1999. She has been followed by Wendi Deng (1999-2013), Jerry Hall (2016-2022), and current spouse Elena Zhukova, who he married in 2024. A full list should also include Prudence MacLeod’s mum, Patricia Booker (1956-1967).
And Murdoch’s businesses and the environment in which they operate have changed beyond recognition. Had the most interesting stuff already happened by 1992, with his return from Oxford as a 21-year-old after his father’s 1952 death, to rebuild the Adelaide News, and – as Wikipedia puts it – “direct his attention to acquisition and expansion”.
Two dates from that period are stuck firmly in my memory:
-In 1986 Murdoch had finally been able to bid for (and buy) the Herald & Weekly Times business that his father had run, cementing domination of Australia’s metropolitan and regional publishing scene. Personally, it had happened just before I arrived from the UK, with post-takeover rationalisation ensuring that none of the interesting meetings offered to this Pommie migrant turned into job offers!
Murdoch had already bought the Perth Sunday Times (1956), Sydney’s Daily Mirror (1960), the Dominion in Wellington, NZ (now Stuff’s The Post), among others, and in 1972, Frank Packer’s morning tabloid Daily Telegraph in Sydney.
Researching this piece, I was reminded of the part Alan Burnet had in the NZ foray, beyond the The Dominion – Murdoch’s first acquisition outside Australia – and later Truth, the Waikato Times and the Wellington Evening Post, launching the Dominion Sunday Times (which later became the Sunday Star Times) and leading to the formation of Independent Newspapers. News’ 45 per cent of INL was sold to Fairfax in 2003, and the business which currently trades as Stuff, onsold to Sinead Boucher for NZ$1 in 2020.
Murdoch also picked up an interest in rival NZME through his initial holding in APN News & Media, but sold it around the time that APN sold its Australian regional newspapers to News in 2016, leaving the New Zealand Herald publisher largely privately-owned.
-The HWT deal also had other impacts, and the timely arrival of ‘bean baron’ (and Heinz chairman) Tony O’Reilly saw the new player (or rather, his Australian-born family) buy east-coast regional group APN. News was later to buy back the business, and closed 112 of its print mastheads in 2020, but that’s another story.
History was also made with the tense Christmas of 1990, when NewsCorp’s debt – then at US$7.5 billion across 146 banks – hit crisis level and a small Pittsburgh bank broke ranks, nearly bringing the curtain down. A version of the story – in which Citibank’s Ann Lane famously laid down the rules: “we are where we are” and “nobody gets out” – is in Shawcross’ first book. At a local level, commissioning of the fifth of Murdoch’s Australian “colour newspaper plants”, in Murarrie, Brisbane, was put back, eventually opening in 1995. It closed in 2021, with production moved to the former APN showpiece site at Yandina.
Also in the first book, the Wapping dispute is another issue I had felt personally, not least because in the UK, my own newspaper’s works had been too close to London to be left alone by the print unions, especially the NGA, that continued to stand in the way of technological progress.
When I reached Melbourne, taking on editorship of Bill Minnis’ Ink magazine, it was quietly suggested by the responsible News executive that I not draw too many parallels between Wapping and News’ second Australian colour print site, being constructed alongside the Yarra river. Boring, I thought, instead finding the technological catch-up fascinating, breaking several exclusives, and (later with GXpress) learning more of the inside story of the trusted Australians Murdoch had sent to London to make the so-called ‘new technology’ – mostly an Atex CMS ahead of much older equipment – work. Of Wapping, Harris simply says the Fleet Street print unions “destroyed themselves: Murdoch was simply cunning and ruthless enough to give them the opportunity”.
The journalist in Rupert Murdoch was, and is ever present, and represented in much-used pictures of a shirt-sleeved publisher. I recall meetings – a dinner on the Gold Coast, and later uneasily sharing a PANPA table with nine News execs – where it has been strongly represented to me that the Boss didn’t tell editors what they should say; but equally it’s clear that papers’ carefully-chosen leaders listened and understood what was good for their careers.
The biggest change factor post 1992 is the manner and extent to which technology has overwhelmed the information industry, relegating newspapers to a “mature” market, supposedly with a short use-by date.
Over the years, News has picked the markets in which it wants to engage, and despite the post-COVID shakedown of regional print mastheads, remains omnipresent… even to the extent of producing the free magazines you pick up at the supermarket or hardware store.
In the US, Murdoch had bought the New York Post – for the first time, at least – in 1976, two years after becoming an American resident and citizen. Because of federal cross-ownership laws, he had to sell it in 1988, but picked it up again in 1993 following an FCC waiver.
Acquisition of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones followed in 2007, and only last January Murdoch added the California Post, a sister print-and-digital daily for his New York Post. Ronald Reagan, New York mayor Ed Koch, and Hillary Clinton – for whom Murdoch hosted a fundraiser – are among those who have expressed their gratitude to the publisher.
You could argue that Rupert Murdoch’s still-dominant print media defy death in an extremely challenging market partly because that is what their owner wants, and because print is still one of the most, if not the most effective means of influencing public opinion.
Just ask politicians and prime ministers that have been pressured by screaming tabloid headlines or the persistence of The Australian’s ‘contest of ideas’. With sites in all states except WA, News, incidentally, has become the biggest printer of newspapers in Australia (as it is one of the biggest in the UK).
Despite a dominant position in digital media, News had failed to pick up one of Australia’s major free-to-air channels, but has eased itself into TV through the evolution of the recently-rebranded – and increasingly politically-relevant – News24.
And of course, there’s more, not least what follows Rupert’s death.
Failing the attempt – the Nevada litigation – to vest control in Lachlan, a 2025 ‘family trust settlement’ bought out siblings Prudence MacLeod, and Elisabeth and James Murdoch at a reported US1 billion each, leaving him voting control and leadership of News and Fox Corp through new family trusts
Oh, and looking back, did we mention the UK phone-hacking scandal – the News of the World killed, the value of The Sun written down to nil, and associated costs a long-running item in group accounts? Shawcross can, again, find a way to tell that story.
We look forward to it.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: Shawcross’ ‘Murdoch’ “from Adelaide to Hollywood” and other related books on the GXpress bookshelf: Jerome Tuccille, Michael Wolff, and a remaindered Bruce Guthrie, ours secured for $5. And there are, of course, more… including Paddy Manning’s ‘The Successor’ and Paul Barry’s ‘Rich Kids’