overview
ABC, SBS, BBC
Advance
Annenberg
AOL
APN
Astors
Aust Networks
Beaverbrook
Bertelsmann
Black
Cox
Disney
DMG
Elsevier
Fairfax
Financial Press
Fleet Street
Hearst
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News & Murdoch
New Yorker
NY Times
Packer
Sony
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Time Warner
Tribune
US Networks
Viacom
Vivendi
W Post
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Murdoch and News
The News Corporation's main site
includes the group's annual report and information about its global
holdings: film production and distribution, television production and
broadcasting, advertising, newspaper and magazine publishing, book
publishing, football teams and other sports ownership, multimedia,
information technology and music publishing.
Last year the group had assets of
around US$36 billion and annual revenue of US$14 billion.
the man
George Munster's A Paper Prince (Viking,
Melbourne 1985) remains the most perceptive biography of Rupert Murdoch,
despite the more recent and lengthier Murdoch (Chatto &
Windus, London 1992) by the otherwise excellent William Shawcross.
Munster's observation, courtesy of former Murdoch cohort Richard Searby,
that Murdoch is a fidget, a man going for a random walk with a line (and
his own money, unlike many of the moguls), holds true. Whether the
dynasty will last beyond the third generation is another question
altogether.
An insight - more of a squint - into
the family dynamics is provided by John Monks' soft-focus biography Elizabeth
Murdoch (Pan, Sydney 1995) of Rupert's mum and widow of the
redoubtable Sir Keith, yet to receive a major biography.
Murdoch
scholars are perforce reliant on the entry in volume 10 of the Australian
Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne Uni Press, Melbourne) and the
slighter, more reverential In Search of Keith Murdoch (Macmillan,
South Melbourne 1980) by Desmond Zwar.
Murdoch-watching has become a minor
industry. Among the more entertaining products are the batch from
News executives, including Full Disclosure (Macmillan, London
1996) by former Economist and Sunday Times editor Andrew
Neil; Good Times, Bad Times (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
1983) by former Times editor Harold Evans and the less splenetic Sundry
Times (John Murray, London 1986) by former Sunday Times editor
Harold Giles.
Among journalistic bios we've read but
don't recommend Thomas Kiernan's bracing Citizen Murdoch (New
York, Dodd Mead 86), the superficial Murdoch (London, Piatkus 89)
by Jerome Tuccille and the doom-&-gloom Murdoch: The Decline of
An Empire (London, Macdonald 91) by Richard Belfield, Christopher
Hird & Sharon Kelly.
Barefaced Cheek: Rupert Murdoch
(Hodder & Stoughton, London 1983) is a glib effort by Michael
Leapman, better known for his more interesting Treachery: The Power
Struggle at TV AM (Unwin Hyman, London 89), an account of
gameplaying by Robert Frost, Murdoch, Bruce Gyngell and others. Rupert
Murdoch: A Business Biography (Angus & Robertson, London 76) by
Simon Regan has an in-house flavour midway through Murdoch's
colonisation of the UK.
Tabloid Baby: An Uncensored Account
of Revolution That Gave Birth to 21st Century Television News
Broadcasting (Celebrity Books, New York 99) by Burt Kearns is a
tabloid-flavoured expose of the birth of the Fox television network, now
the fourth member of the 'Big Three' national networks in the US. It
replaces Alex Block's Outfoxed: Marvin Davis, Rupert Murdoch, Joan
Rivers & the Inside Story of America's 4th Television Network
(St Martins, New York 1990). That was news but is now heading, like
most tabloids, to fish & chip wrapper status. Matthew
Horsman's Sky High (London, Orion 98) is an account of BSkyB, the
Murdoch-dominated satellite broadcaster.
Stuart Crainer's Business the Rupert
Murdoch Way: 10 Secrets of the World's Greatest Dealmaker (Capstone,
Oxford 1999) is disappointing, consistent with others in the series such
as Business the Bill Gates Way (one secret of Bill = "Be
True To Yourself"). Save your money and buy Jock Given's The
Death of Broadcasting (Uni of NSW Press, Sydney 1999). Trevor Barr's thoughtful
Newmedia.com.au:
The Changing Face of Australia's Media and Communications (St
Leonards, Allen & Unwin 00) is essential reading in understanding the interaction
between politicians, bureaucrats, business, consumers and technology.
Other perspectives are provided by AFR
journalist Mark Westfield's blow by blow account in The Gatekeepers: The Global Media
Battle to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale, Pluto Press 00) and
by Timothy Marjoribank's News Corporation,
Technology & the Workplace: Global Strategies, Local Change
(Cambridge Uni Press, Cambridge 00).
Irrespective of his success in building
a global media empire, Murdoch will remain of significance as the man
who restructured Fleet Street (with just a little help from his friends
Margaret Thatcher and the electricians union). Charles Wintour's The
Rise & Fall of Fleet Street (Hutchinson, London 1989) and The
Market For Glory (London, Faber 86) by Simon Jenkins offer
perspectives on 'old media' in the UK.
Andrew Harris' Selling Hitler
(London, Faber 987), about the 'Hitler Diaries' fiasco, is a romp. All
in all, Murdoch comes out of that hoax looking quite astute, which is
more than can be said for patricians and experts such as Hugh
Trevor-Roper and William Rees-Mogg.
Irrespective of his success in building
a global media empire, Murdoch will remain of significance as the man
who restructured Fleet Street (with just a little help from his friends
Margaret Thatcher and the electricians union). Charles Wintour's The
Rise & Fall of Fleet Street (Hutchinson, London 1989) and The
Market For Glory (London, Faber 86) by Simon Jenkins offer
perspectives on 'old media' in the UK.
Andrew Harris' Selling Hitler
(London, Faber 987), about the 'Hitler Diaries' fiasco, is a romp. All
in all, Murdoch comes out of that hoax looking quite astute, which is
more than can be said for patricians and experts such as Hugh
Trevor-Roper and William Rees-Mogg.
Histories of UK newspapers include
David Ayerst's reverent The Manchester Guardian: Biography of A
Newspaper (Ithaca, Cornell Uni Press 71), redolent of Manchester fog
and soporific worthiness. The Pearl of Days: An Intimate Memoir
of The Sunday Times 1822-1972 (London, Hamish Hamilton 72) by Harold
Hobson, Phillip Knightley & Leonard Russell is far more sprightly.
For your next wait in FlightDeck we recommend Knightley's memoir A
Hack's Progress (London, Cape 97) - modest, humane, intelligent.
News holdings
The following page
provides an inventory of News holdings.
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