The story
Founded by Rupert Murdoch on Jun 28, 2013, in New York City.1
Formation
News Corporation, referred to as "News Corp," was started in 1980 in Australia. It was founded by Rupert Murdoch, who led the company in its publishing, in both news and books, as well as television. These were all published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, allowing the new and growing company to gain popularity worldwide.
Starting in 1981, News Corp started developing its television industry, which became its primary goal through the 1990s. In 1996, News Corp began premiering Fox News, which significantly gained popularity. Following the success of News Corp's Fox News, it acquired the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company. This was another success for News Corp since it gave it important names throughout writing, publishing, and television.
As News Corp continued to expand its ownership in June 2010, by putting out a bid for British Sky Broadcasting, it was unable to go through with the acquisition of the television and telephone company. When fact-checked rumors spread about faults in security, regarding a British source, News of the World, being criminally hacked, losing privacy in phone records, it caused News Corp to remove its offer one year later, in July 2011.
On June 28, 2012, Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corporation's publishing operations would be spun off to form a new, publicly traded company. Murdoch stated that performing this split would "unlock the true value of both companies and their distinct assets, enabling investors to benefit from the separate strategic opportunities resulting from more focused management of each division". The move also came in the wake of a series of scandals that had damaged the reputation of multiple News Corporation-owned properties.
On June 28, 2012, News Corp decided to divide both its publishing and media into two different public companies. This change was made to give more focus to each department, while it continued to expand and gain new companies, publishers, and producers. Following the split, the publishing company produced mainstream newspapers, like The Wall Street Journal, as well as publishing books. The media company focused on broadcasting, cable networks in television, producing films, and its pay-tv. Following the split of the company, News Corp's owner continued on with both companies, taking the positions of chairman of the publishing and media entertainment company, while giving up his long-term position as CEO.
Dividing the company into two parts influenced both sections to put extra focus into their own development, without needing to balance the publication and entertainment companies together. In addition to having more focus on each department and company, News Corp brought in extra help with new management teams, which helped both companies stabilize following the split. News Corp also implemented new and separate boards of directors for each company. After this decision, both teams created plans to ensure the split would go smoothly, without causing unnecessary conflict in either department.
Robert Thomson, then editor of The Wall Street Journal, was announced as the initial chief operating officer for the company. While Murdoch did not serve as CEO, he remained chairman and a shareholder of the new News Corp. Thomson promised that the new company would "cultivate a start-up sensibility even though we already work for the world's most established and prestigious diversified media and information services company" and would emphasize building new business models around its properties and content. The logo of the new News Corporation was unveiled at an investor presentation on May 28, 2013; the handwritten logo uses script based on Murdoch's own handwriting. News Corp's board approved the split on May 24, 2013, while shareholders approved the split on June 11;
Preliminary trading on the Australian Securities Exchange of the new News Corp's class B stock began on June 19, 2013, at around $15 per share; a value slightly lower than expected by some analysts. The shares fell in price by 3% to $14.55 per share, valuing the new company at around $7.9 billion US. The corporate split was finalized on June 28, 2013; during the stock splitting process, one share of the new News Corp was given to shareholders for every four shares they owned in the former News Corp.
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The current News Corp began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol "NWS" on July 1, 2013; at the same time, the former News Corporation (which encompassed purely media properties, such as Fox Entertainment Group and 20th Century Fox) was renamed 21st Century Fox.
After the split
On September 4, 2013, News Corp announced that it would sell the Dow Jones Local Media Group, a group of 33 local newspapers, to Newcastle Investment Corp., an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, for $87 million. The newspapers will be operated by GateHouse Media, a newspaper group owned by Fortress. Robert Thomson indicated that the newspapers "were not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio" of the company. GateHouse then filed for prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations to accommodate the acquisition. Then GateHouse emerged from bankruptcy on November 26, 2013.
On December 20, 2013, News Corp announced its acquisition of Dublin, Ireland-based social news agency Storyful, a startup founded by journalist Mark Little. At the time, Storyful was described as "scour[ing] social-media services like Twitter and Instagram" to discover user-generated content "breaking news and viral online content" and after sourcing, to then verify, acquire, and distribute it. Storyful had, for instance, reported 2013 results of 750m views of user-generated videos by its partners. The cost of the Storyful acquisition was €18 million (£15m, US$25m), and marked News Corp's first acquisition since the split. News Corp CEO at the time, Robert Thomson, stated that the service had "become the village square for valuable video, using journalistic sensibility, integrity and creativity", and that with the acquisition, News Corp would "define the opportunities that the digital landscape presents, rather than simply adapt to them".
On May 2, 2014, News Corp acquired romance novel publisher Harlequin Enterprises from Torstar for $415 million. The deal closed on August 1; it is now operated as a subsidiary of News Corp's HarperCollins.
On September 30, 2014, News Corp announced its acquisition of Move, Inc., a real estate listings company and owner of Realtor.com, a 20% stake of which was, at the time, owned by REA Group, a publicly traded subsidiary of News Corp Australia.
News Corp also began making investments in India in late 2014, such as a $30 million investment in real estate site ProTiger in November, the December 2014 purchase of BigDecisions.com, a financial planning website, and the acquisition of Indian media firm VCCircle in March 2015.
In October 2015, News Corp sold its digital education brand Amplify to a management team supported by a group of private investors for an undisclosed sum. In June 2016, News Corp acquired Wireless Group (formerly UTV Media), a British radio broadcaster, for $296 million
In January 2020, News Corp sold Unruly, an outstream video ad marketplace, in exchange of 6.91% of Tremor Video stock. On July 31, 2020, James Murdoch resigned from the News Corp board of directors, "due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company's news outlets and certain other strategic decisions."
On February 4, 2022, News Corp suffered a cyberattack from hackers believed to be linked to China.
On October 14, 2022, it was announced that, under the instruction of Rupert Murdoch, a special committee had been established to explore a potential merger of Fox and News Corp, bringing the two companies back together since the former 21st Century Fox was spun-off from News Corp in 2013. On January 24, 2023, the proposed merger was abandoned by Murdoch.
In February 2023, the company announced that it would be cutting 5% of its workforce across its various divisions.
In September 2023, News Corp reported that Rupert Murdoch would retire from the board of News Corporation. He would also retire from the board of Fox Corporation and his son Lachlan Murdoch would replace him on both boards. The retirement would take effect in November 2023.
An annual meeting of shareholders was held by webcast on 20 November 2024, to determine whether the "dual-class" share structure (voting and non-voting) would be abolished, after Starboard Value, which has bought up a large share of News Corp over the previous year, had proposed a one-share-one-vote system. News Corp had stated that if the proposal is accepted, the new system of shares could only be introduced if agreement between voting and non-voting shareholders was reached. This relates to the ongoing court case in Nevada pitting Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch against the other three siblings, who all have voting shares. The proposal was not accepted at the meeting.
In June 2025, the company announced it had extended the contract of its chief executive Robert Thomson to June 2030.
In January 2026, the California Post was launched as a local version of the New York Post.
From Wikipedia’s article on News Corp, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8