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.
“Ruthless, ambitious, a purveyor of intrigue and scandal for whom loyalty is just a pit stop on the way to a business deal, this is the young Rupert as you’ve never seen him before. A riveting, rollicking tale.”
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Drawing on unpublished archival material and new reportage, Young Rupert pieces together a paper trail of succession, sedition, and power — and a fascinating time capsule of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.
Join Walter in conversation with The Saturday Paper Chief Political Correspondent Karen Middleton.
Tickets: $10 (entry only) // $40 (includes a discounted copy of the book RRP $35)
Walter Marsh is a journalist based in Tarntanya/Adelaide with a background in history and culture. A former editor and staff writer at The Adelaide Review and Rip It Up, his writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, and InDaily.
Karen Middleton is Chief Political Correspondent for The Saturday Paper, and author of An Unwinnable War – Australia in Afghanistan on the political backstory to Australia’s role in the war, and a biography of the now prime minister Anthony Albanese, Albanese – Telling it Straight. A regular contributor to ABC radio, ABC TV’s Insiders and The Drum, the Nine Network’s Weekend Today and Network Ten’s The Project, she is a correspondent for Radio New Zealand, Monocle24 radio London and Turkey’s international TV network TRT World. She is a former Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery president and a Churchill fellow. In 2020, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Canberra.