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James Murdoch will celebrate his 35th birthday tomorrow. It is a young age at which to head a high-profile enterprise spanning two continents, especially amid a media revolution.
But Rupert Murdoch knows he has found a son after his own heart. It is interesting to note that, at 35, Rupert was running a relatively small Australian newspaper group, having just launched the country's only serious national title, The Australian. He was more than two years away from arriving in Britain to buy the News of the World, the stepping stone that would lead to the eventual creation of his global empire.
However tempting it may be to suggest there is a qualitative difference between building an international business from virtually nothing to being installed at the top of a mature business built by someone else, I think James will prove the cynics wrong.
Like his father, he understands the dialectic between risk-taking entrepreneurship and the cautious management of assets. His stewardship of BSkyB is a case in point. He managed it well enough, improving its sales and doubling its profits while pursuing a sensible strategy based on offering customers a multi-platform package of TV, home telephony and broadband.
If he had accomplished that alone, it would have been a notable enough achievement. But the proof that he was his father's son, exhibiting the ruthlessness that marks out the buccaneer from the bean-counter, came with his response to possible threats to the business. Concerned at Sir Richard Branson's move to acquire ITV for Virgin, he snatched 17.9% of its shares and ruined the takeover. It was, of course, controversial - resulting in a Competition Commission investigation - but the fact that he conceived the plan and executed it showed his business mettle.
Doubtless it impressed his father too, convincing him it would be safe to let James run his Asian and European operations so that he could concentrate his energies on the Wall Street Journal.
So what can we expect James to achieve at News International, the British newspaper division that is coping with the challenges presented by the digital age? It is assumed by some commentators that he will not have the same romantic attachment to newsprint as his father.
That is a rather silly viewpoint, however. James spent his young years watching his father at work, and knows just how important newspapers remain.
There are still profits to be made from ink on newsprint despite the gradual growth of online products.
I recall an afternoon when James and his brother Lachlan were shown into my office at Wapping when I was assistant editor of The Sun. I was supposed to explain how the "new technology" worked. The personable Lachlan talked a lot. James, then 13, said nothing. He watched. He nodded. He seemed unimpressed, and I had a feeling that he already knew much more than I did about how Atex computers worked.
In retrospect, I now realise how alike he was to Rupert. But the point is, of course, that he is also his own man, as the ITV shares raid illustrates. It means that he will, after a suitable period for reflection, make his own decisions about what to do with the newspaper business.
Youth is already to the fore in Wapping. The new editor at The Times, James Harding, is 38. Rebekah Wade may have been editor of The Sun for almost five years, but she is still only 39.
I would guess that James will offer strong support to The Times, which has secured a healthy print sale and developed multi-platform journalism with some success (even if its website often functions lamentably).
The Sun is a different matter. It is struggling to maintain sales despite price cuts, with the London street "sellers" often giving copies away for free rather than demanding 20p. That's also a clue to one of the paper's continuing problems, because its readers appear more susceptible than most to freesheet distribution.
Of all the headaches facing James Murdoch, the London war of the free papers is probably the greatest. Will he be happy to accept the substantial losses involved in distributing almost 500,000 copies a day of thelondonpaper when the publisher of London Lite - Associated Newspapers, publisher also of this paper - refuses to cede any territory? It will be fascinating to see how he reacts to the red ink he finds on the News International balance sheet.
Reader views (1)
How do you know that these boys are giving away copies for free? Maybe it was the Sport's Magazine Street Distributor, who looks exactly the same like them (red uniform)? They earn London's minimum wage and can not afford to buy these copies from local newsagents. They do this job for living and studies in London, not for cheating and trying to proove something to others.
- Md Hossain, London, 20/07/2009 21:44
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