Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation showcased a new logo this week. Gone is the stiff corporate text laid over a stylised globe; in its place comes a simple, informal, even jauntily handwritten “News Corp”.
Why is this headline news? After all, businesses change their logos often enough. But, of course, few businesses have the global reach and influence of News Corp, the owner of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, 20th Century Fox, The Times and more. Industry analysts say the new handwritten logo, created from a composite of the handwriting of Rupert and his father Keith, is intended to signal a fresh start, distancing the company from the phone-hacking scandal of 2011 that saw Murdoch hauled before the UK Parliament. So how did a plucky Australian build the world’s second-largest media conglomerate? And where is News Corp heading?
• There are countless biographies out there but turn to Michael Wolff's Rupert Murdoch: The Man Who Owns the News for the one widely acknowledged as definitive. The American journalist Wolff outlines Murdoch's modest head start – his father Keith left him a controlling interest in an Adelaide newspaper – and charts his ascension via a series of daring gambles, such as the establishment of Sky TV in the UK in 1989. Vast early debts from the network almost sank Murdoch's entire empire; now Sky generates over £1.2 billion (Dh7bn) in annual profits for News Corp.
• Among Murdoch's most lasting contributions to media? He changed print journalism forever when he broke the power of the print unions in the UK. Read Bad News: The Wapping Dispute by John Lang and Graham Dodkins to see how, in 1986, Murdoch secretly shipped his team of Times journalists away from print union control to a new office in Wapping. Violent clashes outside the Wapping office were commonplace but Murdoch won.
• An 83-year-old Murdoch is seeking to shake off the damage inflicted by the phone hacking scandals of 2011. To recall the fuss see Dial M for Murdoch by Tom Watson, the British MP who helped bring hacking to light. Murdoch, though, remains unbowed. At a recent shareholder meeting, he told reporters he sees "opportunity everywhere". Past form suggests he will not be slow to seize it.
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