Amid reports that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as head 21st Century Fox, his historical status as one of America’s most notorious press lords is secure. As owner of The Wall Street Journal and creator of Fox News, he ranks in the same league as William Randoph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Yet looking back on his career, it’s remarkable both how recent his foothold in America is, and how shaky it initially was.

In 1977, when Murdoch bought New York magazine and The Village Voice, he faced a fierce staff revolt, one that left its mark on the billionaire owner. In 2011, more than a quarter century after he sold the alternative weekly, Murdoch described the Voice as “the bane of my existence.” A Time magazine cover from Jan 17, 1977, portrayed Murdoch as King Kong astride the Empire State Building, with a blaring headline reading "EXTRA!!! AUSSIE PRESS LORD TERRIFIES GOTHAM."



Yet despite the resistance he met, Murdoch’s early American foray prefigured his larger ambitions for remaking the media landscape. As journalist Jack Doyle noted in an article on PopHistoryDig.com, “By today’s standards, his 1976-77 New York acquisitions seem tame. Yet these deals, and the changes Murdoch undertook with them at the time, shook things up in the media print world and hinted at his grander plans ahead.”



Before his entry into the crucial New York City media market, Murdoch had been confined to publications far removed from the Big Apple. In 1973, he bought the San Antonio Express and the San Antonio Evening News. Murdoch moved to the United States the following year, starting up The National Star, a tabloid weekly in the manner of The National Enquirer. In 1976, he purchased the New York Post, then a liberal daily.

But it was Murdoch’s acquisition of New York and the Voice that spread journalistic alarm, since both publications adhered to values that were more inimical to the right-wing populist than even the Post. Under founder Clay Felker, New York was the Mecca of the New Journalism, the magazine that gave a forum for writers like Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, and Gail Sheehy to do novelistic reporting that changed the rules for non-fiction. Meanwhile the Voice was the thriving hotbed of New York radicalism, the venue where crucial debates about feminism and gay rights received a mainstream airing. Neither publication seemed in sync with Murdoch’s political and journalistic agenda.