Rupert Murdoch by Neil Chenoweth

Description

How a small Adelaide inheritance became a global media empire. In this definitive account, award-winning Australian investigative journalist Neil Chenoweth — drawing on years of reporting for the Australian Financial Review — delivers the untold story of Rupert Murdoch: how a young man who inherited a modest newspaper group in 1952 built the most powerful media empire on earth.

Chenoweth traces the ruthless, brilliant ascent in detail: the early Australian acquisitions, the conquest of Fleet Street with The Sun and the smashing of the print unions at Wapping, the audacious leap into American television with the launch of Fox, the satellite gambles — and the deal-making, political maneuvering, and family dynamics that powered it all. Published by Crown Business in 2001, it benefits from the access and skepticism of a reporter who watched the empire from its home turf.

Essential for anyone who wants to understand modern media power, this is investigative biography at its best — the story of how one man’s ambition, appetite for risk, and instinct for the popular touch redrew the map of global communications.

He inherited a small Adelaide newspaper group from his father and turned it into the most powerful media empire on earth. In Rupert Murdoch: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Media Wizard, award-winning Australian investigative journalist Neil Chenoweth delivers the definitive account of how Murdoch did it — published by Crown Business in 2001.

Drawing on years of reporting for the Australian Financial Review, Chenoweth traces Murdoch’s ruthless ascent: from the 1952 inheritance of News Limited through the conquest of Fleet Street, the launch of Fox, and the audacious deals that built News Corporation into a global colossus spanning newspapers, television, film, and satellite.

Inside, readers will find:

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• The making of a mogul: how a shy outsider outmaneuvered rivals on three continents.
• Boardroom warfare: the takeovers, tabloid wars, and political alliances behind the empire.
• Investigative depth: the product of an award-winning journalist’s relentless digging.
• Media history: essential context for understanding modern news, from print to satellite TV.

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For readers of business biographies and media history, this is the essential, unauthorized portrait of the man who reinvented the news business.