Young Rupert : the making of the Murdoch empire

For half a century, the Murdoch media empire and its polarising patriarch have swept across the globe, shaking up markets and democracies in their wake.

But how did it all start?In September 1953, 22-year-old Rupert Murdoch landed in Adelaide, South Australia.

Fresh from Oxford with a radical reputation, the young and brash son of Sir Keith Murdoch had arrived to fulfill his father’s dying wish: for Rupert to live a ‘useful, altruistic, and full life’ in the media. For decades, Sir Keith had been a giant of the Australian press, but his final years were spent bitterly fending off rivals and would-be successors.

When the dust settled on his father’s estate, Rupert was left with the Adelaide-based News Ltd and its afternoon paper The News — a minor player in a small, parochial city. But even this inheritance was soon under siege, as the left-wing ‘Boy Publisher’ stared down his father’s old colleagues at the city’s paper of record, The Advertiser, and a conservative establishment kept in power by a decades-old gerrymander. Led by Rupert’s friend, ally, and editor-in-chief Rohan Rivett, the fledgling Murdoch press began a seven-year campaign of circulation wars, expansion, and courtroom battles that divided the city and would lay the foundations for a global empire — if Rupert and Rohan didn’t end up in custody first. Drawing on unpublished archival material and new reportage, Young Rupert pieces together a paper trail of succession, sedition, and power — and a fascinating time capsule of Australian media on the cusp of an extraordinary ascension.