News Corporation
Rupert Murdoch turned one Adelaide newspaper into a group holding British and American papers, Fox, HarperCollins and Sky, then split it in 2013 into News Corp and 21st Century Fox, most of which Disney bought in 2019 for about $71 billion. Investors study it for two mechanics: cash from mature newspapers funded entry into television, and a dual-class structure kept family voting control on a much smaller economic stake. The literature divides into access-driven biography, investigative reporting on the company's methods, and the phone-hacking books that followed the closure of the News of the World in 2011. Michael Wolff wrote from inside the family, Neil Chenoweth and Bruce Page wrote against it, and Watson and Hickman documented the scandal that forced Murdoch to drop his bid for the rest of BSkyB.
Start here
- The Man Who Owns the NewsMichael Wolff, 2008
- Murdoch's WorldDavid Folkenflik, 2013
- Dial M for MurdochTom Watson, Martin Hickman, 2012
The standard biography of the first four decades.
Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
The financial engineering behind News Corp, traced by a forensic reporter.
Structural argument about how the papers trade coverage for political favour.
Fifty hours of interviews plus the family; the closest to authorised.
Phone hacking, by the MP who pursued it in Parliament.
The pay-TV smartcard hacking operation; the strangest corner of the empire.
The empire after the phone-hacking scandal.
