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James Davidson edited Melbourne's Herald and Weekly Times until 1918, when the newspaper's board removed him.
He then bought two regional papers:
These purchases aligned with Collins House mining consortium's strategy to counter union influence in both cities, where the company operated zinc smelters and lead mines.
Davidson's newspapers were known to oppose strikes and criticized union leaders.
The Barrier Miner, for instance, published daily attacks on union organizers during the 1919-1920 miners' strike.
His papers also promoted Collins House's interests by supporting tariff protection for Australian manufacturing.
After Davidson died in 1930, his newspaper holdings formed the core of News Limited.
Keith Murdoch acquired this company in 1952, using it as his first step toward building News Corporation.
The regional papers Davidson bought for £50,000 in 1918 became the foundation of what grew into a multi-billion dollar global media network.
Keith Murdoch transformed Australian media from 1915 to 1952.
As a war correspondent in 1915, he wrote a scathing letter exposing British military failures at Gallipoli, which reached Prime Minister Asquith and helped end the campaign.
Back in Melbourne, he bought The Herald newspaper in 1921 for £50,000.
Over three decades, he acquired 11 major newspapers across Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne.
His papers reached 2.5 million readers daily by 1940.
He launched radio station 3DB in 1927 and built Australia's first newspaper-radio network.
During WWII, he briefly headed the Department of Information in 1940, but resigned after 3 months to focus on his media business.
He vertically integrated by buying paper mills and printing presses, cutting costs by 30%.
Government investigations in 1935 and 1947 found his company controlled 98% of morning newspaper circulation in three state capitals.
In 1952, Rupert Murdoch inherited The Adelaide News, a single newspaper in South Australia with a circulation of 75,000.
He began buying struggling local papers, revamping their content with crime stories and scandals that doubled readership.
By 1964, he owned publications in every Australian state.
Murdoch entered the British market in 1969 by purchasing the News of the World and The Sun—turning them into tabloids that sold 4 million copies daily.
He acquired the Times of London in 1981, while simultaneously expanding into American television by buying six Fox stations and launching the Fox Broadcasting Network in 1986.
Under his direct control, News Corp's outlets consistently backed conservative politicians like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America.
In 2011, evidence emerged that News of the World journalists had hacked 5,500 phones, including those of murder victims and their families.
The scandal forced the tabloid's closure and resulted in $500 million in legal settlements.
Despite this, News Corp's holdings in 2023 included The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, HarperCollins Publishers, and 120 newspapers across three continents.
He built News Corp into a $71 billion company while dramatically lowering industry-wide reporting standards.
Robert Thomson rose from reporter to editor through 20 years of daily newsroom work at The Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Times.
In 2008, he became the first Australian editor of The Wall Street Journal.
As CEO of News Corp since 2013, Thomson has publicly confronted Google over advertising revenue, demanding the tech company pay publishers for news content.
In a 2019 speech to shareholders, he called Google's search algorithms "a rape of our journalism," and later negotiated content licensing deals worth millions of dollars.
Under Thomson's leadership, News Corp has acquired digital real estate companies like REA Group and Move Inc., while print newspaper circulation has fallen by roughly 30%.
He has redirected resources toward Dow Jones's digital subscription business, which grew from 2.2 million subscribers in 2013 to 4.5 million in 2023.
Interestingly, Thompson still edits major company announcements himself.
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