Word: murdochized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mood is more optimistic at the Chicago Sun-Times, which Murdoch bought in 1983 for $90 million. Though its circulation trails the competition (639,000, vs. 776,000 for the Tribune), the Sun-Times turns a marginal profit. Editor Frank Devine, who was installed by Murdoch last January, is confident that a buyer will be found. "Of course, I'd rather Rupert kept the Sun-Times. After all, he's a rather zingy fellow, the kind of live-wire person I like...
Zingy is not necessarily the first adjective many of Murdoch's employees would pick to describe their boss. Industrious, yes. After graduating from Oxford in 1953, Murdoch worked as a subeditor on the London Daily Express in order to learn the newspaper trade. Ambitious, yes. Once he had revitalized his father's papers, he quickly bought a string of other Australian dailies, then eventually hopscotched to London in 1969, when he acquired the Sunday scandal sheet News of the World, and the U.S. in 1973, when he purchased both the San Antonio Express and News...
...Today Murdoch oversees a barony of more than 80 publications that stretches from the august Times of London to the brassy London Sun (with 4.1 million readers, the world's largest English-language daily), from yuppie- caressing New York magazine to the Star, a tabloid weekly once specializing in offbeat diets and visits by UFOs that is now trying to climb upscale. The prototypical Murdoch daily is flag-waving conservative, and politicians favored by its owner are featured prominently in the news columns. At a time when newspapers are increasingly concerned with attracting affluent readers, Murdoch presents himself...
...Murdoch, however, does not practice an egalitarian management style. Despite pledges made to Parliament that he would respect the editorial independence of the Times, Murdoch forced out Editor Harold Evans after a year of editorial and budgetary wrangling. He indulges a love for details, whether it is writing a headline for the Post or keeping in constant touch with his worldwide holdings by telephone. As a boss, he can be emotional, impulsive and demanding. "Murdoch runs a Byzantine court," says a former Sun-Times executive. "There is only one decision maker...
...flamboyance of his publications and the jet-jumping schedule he must keep to oversee them, Murdoch does not have flashy tastes. He always flies by commercial airliner. His suits, though well tailored, are often wrinkled. He rarely joins New York's evening social whirl, preferring quiet dinners at his Fifth Avenue triplex with his wife Anna and children. (Murdoch has a daughter from his first marriage and two sons and a daughter from his present one.) Weekends are often spent at a farm in upstate New York or at a ski lodge in Aspen, Colo...