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December 23, 2008

Michael Wolff: ‘Murdoch doesn’t care about technology’

By Paul McNally

Rupert Murdoch ‘doesn’t care’ about technology and remains ‘wholly completely committed to the print business’, his biographer Michael Wolff has revealed.

Wolff, the Vanity Fair media columnist who was given unfettered access to Murdoch for nine months, said Murdoch was “perfectly content to be the last man standing” in print.

In an interview for the January edition of Press Gazette, Wolff said Murdoch would do all he could to protect his print business. In the UK, News Corp has recently spent £500m upgrading its presses to full colour.

“There’s a monomania here: ‘I want to be a newspaper proprietor and I will do anything to make myself a newspaper proprietor, and if that means that I have to buy movie studios and television networks, I will do that. My reason for being is to run newspapers'”, Wolff said.

He added: “[Murdoch] doesn’t know anything about technology. He doesn’t care about it. When it comes to technology, Rupert Murdoch is a 77-year-old man. No more, no less.

“Even when he goes out and makes announcements about technology – technology is the future, News Corp is a technologically advanced company – that is just what somebody has given him to say.

“He does not mean it, he does not understand it, he is incurious about it. He doesn’t use a computer, he doesn’t get email, he cannot get his cell phone to work.”

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Read the full interview with Michael Wolff in the January edition of Press Gazette. The Man Who Owns the News is published by The Bodley Head, priced £20.

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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