Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of News Corp and Fox after 70 years as arguably Australia’s and the world’s most influential media mogul.
Rupert who’s 92 will become chair emeritus of the two organisations, meaning he will hold the title in an honorary way, while his eldest son Lachlan Murdoch, who’s 52, will take over as chair.
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“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles,” Rupert said in a note to staff.
Assuming the head position today Lachlan said in a statement: “On behalf of the Fox and News Corp boards of directors, leadership teams, and all the shareholders who have benefited from his hard work, I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career”.
“We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted,” he said.
Rupert Murdoch’s media career began in 1952 when he inherited his father’s shares in an Adelaide newspaper called the News. In the following 30 years, his empire expanded across Australia and the world to include newspapers in the US and the UK, before expanding into TV, launching channels around the world throughout the 80s and 90s, as well as film studio Twentieth Century Fox and publisher HarperCollins.
News Corp is Australia’s biggest media organisation and it owns about 60 per cent of the metropolitan and national daily news outlets by circulation. Looking at readership, data from December 2020 suggested News Corp’s seven major print papers were read between 2 and 2.9 million times on any given weekday.
Now that empire is in the hands of Lachlan, who was born in London, raised in the US and now lives in Sydney with his Australian-born wife and their children. Lachlan’s first job when he was 18 was at Queensland News Corp newspaper the courier mail, of which he was appointed general manager at age 22. At age 23 he took over as general manager of the Australian.
So what does his ascension mean for Australian media?
Well In recent years Lachlan had already been running News Corp as co-chair and has made some drastic changes including cutting staff at the head of editorial at the Australian.
Media analyst for the Guardian Amanda Meade said Lachlan is apparently less wedded to the Australian than his father was so its future could be uncertain, but he is stoked with how well Sky News, Foxtel and streaming services like Binge are going here.
But he’s also rubbing many people in the industry here the wrong way, last year Crikey invited Murdoch to sue them over an article his lawyers claimed was defamatory, but he withdrew those legal proceedings earlier this year, which Crikey considered a big win.
But it doesn’t look like the Murdoch empire’s grip on Australia will loosen any time soon.
Aleksandra Bliszczyk is the Deputy Editor of VICE Australia. Follow her on Instagram.
