The Man Who Owns the News (57 page)

The analysts’ call was classic Murdoch. He refused to prepare, waved away all advice, and then, on an open line to Wall Street and to investors everywhere, he got distracted, lost his train of thought, and, evidently with other, more interesting things on his mind, was impatient with everybody’s questions and interrupted Peter Chernin. It was a disastrous performance, sending News shares down another 7 percent. Even his most loyal retainers were furious.

Say what you want, he’d once again made the point:

It all depends on him.

ENDNOTES

 

PROLOGUE

Murdoch toying with changing News Corp.’s name:
Gary Ginsberg, conversation with author, October 10, 2007.

Agent provocateur ads:
Murdoch interview, October 10, 2007. The ads that finally ran, in a $2 million campaign, had the headline “Defying Conventional Wisdom for Six Decades” and contained a timeline of News Corp.’s acquisitions since 1954. “Today the greatest brand in financial journalism joins up with the world’s most restless global media company,” the ad read in part.

James’ annual report:
Murdoch interview, October 10, 2007.

West Side railyards bid:
After the credit crunch hit, News Corp. dropped out of its bid. Related in March 2008.

Murdoch wiped out:
He added: “It’s awful, the amount of time I sat around thinking about it…I was very calm about it all. I was rather amazed by how calm I was through it all. When it was over I was suddenly tired and I realized just what a nervous strain it had been.” Murdoch interview, September 19, 2007.

Col Allan breaks cuff link:
Former and current News Corp. sources.

Wanting to sack Dow Jones employees:
Murdoch interview, September 22, 2007.

“Doesn’t he understand it’s our paper now?”:
News Corp. executive in conversation with the author, December 14, 2007.

Keller confronts Ginsberg:
Gary Ginsberg, conversation with the author, June 2007. This appeared in the author’s September 2007
Vanity Fair
piece about the Dow Jones takeover. In this piece Keller was described as “angrily” confronting Ginsberg; Ginsberg subsequently described Keller’s manner as more edgy or mocking.

O’Reilly talking dirty: Andrea Mackris v. Bill O’Reilly, News Corporation, Fox News Channel, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., and Westwood One, Inc.,
filed October 13, 2004, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York; settled two weeks later. The
New York Post
reported that O’Reilly had paid “multimillions of dollars.”

Richard Johnson takes money:
News Corp. admitted that Richard Johnson in 1997 had accepted a “Christmas gift” of $1,000 in an envelope from New York restaurateur Nello Balan, a frequent gossip subject. The company did not deny a claim by fired gossip columnist Ian Spiegelman that
Girls Gone Wild
founder Joe Francis had thrown Johnson a $50,000 bachelor party in Mexico.

Jonathan Alter:
Conversation with author at Media 3 television studio in midtown Manhattan in September 2007.

Tina Brown:
e-mail to author, September 5, 2007.

Judith Regan suddenly taken seriously:
See Frank Rich, “What ‘That Regan Woman’ Knows,”
New York Times,
November 18, 2007.

Murdoch is a “gifted journalist”:
“Rupert is a very fine journalist,” Col Allan told Lloyd Graves. “You can take any person on a newspaper—anyone—and he can do their job. He’s simply a gifted journalist.” “Rupe’s Attack Dog Gets Bitten, Keeps Barking,”
New York,
September 10, 2007.

Murdoch “has demonstrated a habit over time…”:
David Carr,
On the Record
podcast,
http://www.ontherecordpodcast.com/pr/otro/blog-impact-revealed.aspx
.

Murdoch on a New York magazine best-of list:
“Reasons to Love New York,”
New York,
December 17, 2007.

Marcus Brauchli talking up Murdoch:
Interviews with
Wall Street Journal
reporters.

Vendetta against Primedia: New York
magazine sources.

“And she believed him”:
Interview with Prudence Murdoch, February 28, 2008.

“Just say what you want to say”:
Interview with Prudence Murdoch, February 28, 2008.

CHAPTER
1

Murdoch quits smoking:
Murdoch, swimming off the coast of Sicily in 2007, made a bet with London
Sun
editor Rebekah Wade, then thirty-nine, that he could beat her in a race around his yacht. If he won, she had to give up smoking. He told her he gave up smoking at forty-two. Conversation between Wade and the author, October 2007.

“Too busy to tell you the truth”:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Could have had friends:
Conversation between Murdoch and his wife in front of his children.

“Married to the business”:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Shyness:
Jenkins,
The Market for Glory,
69.

Crippled by shyness:
Evans,
Good Times, Bad Times,
159.

Face-lift:
“Banned by Fleet Street: Murdoch by His Butler,”
Punch,
July 4–17, 1998

Sending his gang back to London:
“I more or less pushed them back to London, because I could see they had no understanding, they thought they were having a good time running around New York in limousines. I wasn’t happy with some of them, so…I kept some of them, brought some Australians in, and recruited Americans where I could.” Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Hardy finds the Murdoch years most satisfying:
Bert Hardy interview, October 4, 2007, London.

E. 72nd Street apartment:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

News Corp. market cap in 1974:
Murdoch interview, October 10, 2007.

James Goodale:
Conversation with author, September 13, 2007.

Knows Sulzbergers, Katharine Graham, and Leonard Goldenson:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

“Not just monopolistic, but growing ever more boring”:
Murdoch interview, October 9, 2007.

Hugh Bancroft:
After years of mental illness, Hugh Bancroft suffered a breakdown in 1932 and went to live in the blacksmith shop on his family’s Cohasset estate. In the week before October 17, he checked out books from the local library on poisonous gases and then stuffed the doors and windows of the shop so he could gas himself. The
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
initially reported the death as a heart attack. Tofel,
Restless Genius
(from manuscript of April 2008, 99).

Bancroft family oath:
Tofel,
Restless Genius
(from manuscript of April 2008, 190).

Bancroft family giving Dow Jones managers carte blanche:
Interviews with former and current Dow Jones managers and Bancroft family members.

Kann avoids an offer:
Interview with Peter Kann, May 14, 2008.

Keeping information from the family:
Interviews with Dow Jones management and Bancroft family members.

Billy Cox:
In interviews with reporters who covered the Elizabeth Goth and Billy Cox insurrection in 1997, they said that they had received telephone calls from Dow Jones managers that attempted to smear Billy Cox.

Cox and Goth blab to Fortune:
Joseph Nocera, “Heard on the Street,”
Fortune,
February 3, 1997.

Parade of suitors:
Interviews with Richard J. Tofel, September 14, 2007, and Peter Kann, May 14, 2008.

Nothing happens:
In 1997, after the
Fortune
article came out, Bancroft scion Crawford Hill gave a speech at a family meeting, in which he said it was time to change the coach. “It was pretty well acknowledged across the family for the most part that…there is a lot of respect and affections for Peter Kann—he’s a great guy, a great writer, great journalist, no doubt about that—but we also had the same view that this is not a great businessman to be leading this enterprise in the direction that it needs to go. That was well acknowledged—but there was this inability to do something about it.” Interview with Bancroft family member, June 27, 2008.

CHAPTER
2

Rupert and Anna Murdoch were married in April 1967, announced their separation on April 20, 1998, and divorced in June 1999.

Wendi Deng Murdoch was born in the city of Jinan, in Shandong province, on December 10, 1968.

Murdoch moves to SoHo:
Rupert and Wendi Murdoch spent $6.5 million on a penthouse apartment on Prince Street in September 1999. Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch spent $3.5 million on an apartment at 285 Lafayette Street in mid-October, and James bought a $1.35 million apartment on Downing Street in 1998. Kate Kelly and Carmela Ciurara, “The Murdochs of Downtown,”
New York Observer
, December 26, 1999.

“His whole family like this. They so cheap”:
Wendi Murdoch interview, April 28, 2008.

Number of homes:
Wendi Murdoch interview, May 19, 2008.

Howard Rubenstein negotiating truce with Mort Zuckerman:
Ken Auletta, “The Fixer,”
New Yorker,
February 12, 2007.

Murdoch paid $350,000 for a duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue:
Motoko Rich, “Make an Offer,”
New York Times,
October 13, 2005.

“So WASPy”:
Wendi Murdoch interview, April 28, 2008.

“Incomparably imperial apartment”:
Tom Scocca, “Rupert Murdoch: Can the Newspaper Business Outlive the City’s Cunningest Media Mogul?”
New York Observer,
December 18, 2005.

Hair dyed orange and aubergine:
In interviews with each of Rupert Murdoch’s older children—except James—they all commented on his hair color, as did a number of executives.

The most difficult press inquiry is about Trump rent:
Former
New York Post
reporter Tim Arango reported in “Mogul Rent Control,”
Fortune
, October 30, 2006, that Murdoch, under pressure from the press, had decided to pay back the $50,000-a-month rent that News Corp. had been paying for him to live in the Trump Tower while his Fifth Avenue apartment was being renovated. Murdoch had tried to defend the payments on the basis that his official address was still in Los Angeles and therefore the company should pay for his accommodation while working in New York. Claire Hoffman, “Murdoch’s Pay Includes a $50,000-a-Month Rental,”
Los Angeles Times,
September 9, 2006.

Murdoch learning about Malone buying up News Corp. shares:
Interview with Gary Ginsberg, June 10, 2008.

“I was asleep or something”:
Murdoch interview, January 29, 2008.

“…nice old man”:
Steve Fishman, “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Be King,”
New York,
September 11, 2005.

Stan Shuman past his sell date:
Murdoch interview, September 19, 2007.

And never misses a day of work:
“I have not missed a single day of work,” Murdoch boasted in an interview with Geraldine Fabrikant and Mark Landler after finishing his radiation therapy. “Just Which Murdoch Will Become the Next Rupert?”
New York Times,
October 8, 2000.

Peter Chernin and Roger Ailes ganging up against Lachlan Murdoch:
Interviews with senior News Corp executives and Hollywood sources.

New York Post
’s losses:
As described by senior News Corp. executives.

Wasserstein and Murdoch lunch:
Bruce Wasserstein and Rupert Murdoch had a falling-out during the Dow Jones takeover when Wasserstein tried to collect a fee from Murdoch for suggesting the deal. Murdoch interview, September 19, 2007.

Vernon Jordan tells Murdoch to put the money on the table:
Jordon also irritates Murdoch by soliciting a fee. Murdoch interview, September 19, 2007.

Jimmy Lee urges him to look at Dow Jones:
Jimmy Lee interview, October 15, 2007.

Norm Pearlstine and John Huey visit Murdoch:
Norm Pearlstine interview, September 12, 2007, and conversation with John Huey, September 11, 2007. When the author first brought up the meeting with Huey and Pearlstine, Murdoch said he couldn’t remember the incident. Yet a description of the meeting—different in some details from the one used in this book—turned up, most likely provided by Murdoch, in a
Newsweek
profile of Murdoch, “Murdoch, Ink,” by Johnnie L. Roberts, published April 28, 2008.