The Murdoch Method

Following Murdoch’s journey from a small-town newspaperman to a globe-dominating media mogul, a clear-eyed examination of Rupert Murdoch’s business philosophies and management techniques, from a key advisor of thirty-five years.

After having worked closely with the legendary media titan for thirty-five years, Irwin Stelzer is uniquely positioned to evaluate Murdoch’s media empire through periods of rapid expansion and acquisitions, times of financial and regulatory stress, and political battles in Britain and America. Stelzer helped plan important company conclaves and assisted with Murdoch’s speeches, at least one of which was responsible for having News Corp barred by the Chinese regime from doing business in that country.

Here are the philosophies on how Rupert approaches and values deals, whether stalking the Wall Street Journal for decades before pouncing, or “over-paying” for everything from Fox Studios to NFL rights; how he copes with regulatory constraints; how he wins some and loses some, must notably MySpace. The Murdoch Method is the sum total of the management techniques that grew out of Rupert’s attitudes and conceptions, taking him from a struggling newspaper in an out-of-the-way town in Australia to running a globe-dominating media enterprise.

Irwin Stelzer, an award-winning columnist for The Sunday Times (London), is a regular commentator on business affairs for the BBC. He has held key positions at two of Washington’s leading think tanks, the Hudson Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, as well as at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He serves on the advisory board of The Weekly Standard, where he writes a weekly column. He and his wife, author Cita Stelzer, live in Aspen, Colorado.