News Corp (NWSA)
News Corp (Nasdaq: NWSA, NWS) is a multinational publishing and media company with roots stretching back to 1923 and a present-day footprint spanning newspapers, broadcasting, digital platforms, and book publishing across three continents. Founded by Rupert Murdoch in Australia as a regional newspaper business, it has grown into one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, with major stakes in tabloid and broadsheet journalism in the UK and US, a controlling interest in Fox Corporation (which includes the Fox Broadcasting network), and an expanding digital portfolio. The company’s current incarnation—separate from its former broadcasting crown jewel Fox Entertainment, spun off in 2019—focuses on publishing, news gathering, and content production, operating in an industry that has experienced one of the sharpest revenue disruptions of the past two decades.
From regional newspapers to global media empire
The company’s origins lie in the Adelaide News, a South Australian newspaper founded in 1923 by Sir Keith Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s father. Rupert Murdoch inherited the business in 1952 and spent the next four decades assembling a press empire that became legendary for both its commercial success and its outsized influence on politics and popular culture. He bought his first UK paper (the News of the World) in 1969, then the Sun, turning the tabloid press into a dominant force in British media. The move into American newspapers came with the acquisition of the New York Post in 1976 and the Wall Street Journal in 2007, cementing Murdoch’s position as one of the most powerful media moguls of the age.
Parallel to the newspaper empire, Murdoch built a major television business. Fox Broadcasting launched in 1986, alongside Fox News in 1996, which became one of the most watched and influential cable news channels in the world. Fox Entertainment properties, including production studios and satellite TV interests, grew to represent a significant portion of the company’s value, especially as cable and broadcast television dominated the 1990s and 2000s.
The story of News Corp in the 2010s onward is the story of managing a legacy empire through a structural collapse in traditional media. The 2011 phone-hacking scandal in the UK, which brought down the News of the World, marked a turning point in regulatory and public perception. More gradually but more consequentially, digital-native news outlets, aggregators, and social media siphoned advertising and readers away from print newspapers at a pace that no paywall or cost-cutting exercise could offset. In 2019, the company spun off its entertainment broadcasting assets (Fox Corporation and Fox Entertainment) and refocused on publishing, digital platforms, and media services—an attempt to streamline and face the emerging reality of its core business.
How News Corp earns money
News Corp’s revenue breaks across three main segments: newspaper publishing (print and digital), television broadcasting, and digital media and information services.
The newspaper and book publishing division covers the company’s flagship titles—the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the Sunday Times, the Sun, the Times Literary Supplement, and others—as well as book imprints under Hachette, a joint venture with Lagardère. Historically the largest revenue source, newspaper publishing now derives income from a mix of print circulation, digital subscriptions, and advertising. The transition has been painful: print advertising has collapsed faster than digital can offset, and even successful paywalls (like the Wall Street Journal’s, one of the earliest and most rigorous) serve a limited subset of readers. The company has responded with rapid cost reduction—closing print editions in some markets, consolidating staff, and shifting resources toward digital-first newsrooms. Revenue here is declining in absolute terms but at a slowing pace.
The Television segment includes News Corp’s ownership stake in Fox Corporation (roughly 39% as of recent filings), which owns and operates the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News, Fox Sports, and other channels. Though Fox Corporation is technically a separate company in which News Corp holds a minority stake, the dividend income and equity earnings contribute substantially to the parent’s results. Advertising on Fox properties remains a significant revenue stream, though cable television viewership has been on a years-long decline.
The Digital Media and Information Services division is the company’s most rapidly growing and highest-margin segment, encompassing properties like Storyblocks (a digital asset library), Amplify (an advertising platform), and a range of enterprise software and data services aimed at professional markets. This segment, developed largely through acquisition and organic expansion in the 2010s, is where the company is attempting to build its future—recurring revenue, high margins, and a customer base of publishers, advertisers, and media companies rather than general audiences.
The structural challenge: print to digital
News Corp’s central business challenge is structural, not cyclical. Print newspaper advertising has migrated to Google and Facebook, putting immense pressure on the economics of traditional publishing. Major metropolitan papers, even successful ones, have shed half or more of their staff since the 2000s. News Corp has been more resilient than many legacy publishers—the Wall Street Journal’s paywall is one of the few genuinely successful digital subscription models in news—but it has not defied gravity. The company’s strategies to offset decline include aggressive cost management, international expansion (particularly in Australia, where it has strong positions), and heavy investment in digital native products and tools for other publishers.
A critical asset is the Wall Street Journal, which remains one of the few newspapers with substantial and growing digital subscription revenue. Linked to that is the company’s access to professional and elite audiences—financial professionals, business readers, political insiders. That audience tends to have higher willingness to pay for content than mass-market readers, and it is less dependent on algorithmic distribution through social platforms. News Corp’s other titles, from the Times of London to the tabloid Sun, enjoy less favorable economics, though the Times and Sunday Times have also developed meaningful paywall revenue.
Risks and pressures
The fundamental risk facing News Corp is that the economics of news publishing at scale have shifted irreversibly. Newspapers were once local monopolies where advertisers had to buy because it was the only way to reach a mass audience in a city. That model is gone. Digital advertising favors platforms with unprecedented targeting and measurement (Google, Meta, Amazon), and most readers have access to unlimited free news on their phones. No amount of paywall elevation, retrenchment, or cost-cutting changes this fact.
The company is exposed to fluctuations in advertising cycles—when the economy softens, advertisers cut spending first, and premium advertising (the kind that still exists in print and on quality digital outlets) falls faster than the mass market. A significant fraction of revenue still depends on print, a shrinking medium. Geopolitical and regulatory risks are also present: News Corp’s control of major news operations in the UK and US has drawn criticism and regulatory attention for decades, and any serious regulatory action against its media influence could constrain business.
Finally, the separation from Fox in 2019 left News Corp without the entertainment production muscle and broadcast reach it once wielded, making it harder to compete with fully integrated media companies. The digital services division, while promising, is still in growth phase and not yet large enough to offset structural decline in traditional publishing.
How to research News Corp
Start with the company’s annual 10-K filing (SEC CIK 0001564708) to see the segment breakdown and the trend in digital subscription revenue, advertising trends, and the company’s cash position. The quarterly earnings calls are where management discusses which markets and properties are stabilizing or growing, which are in managed decline, and how much cash the company must invest to maintain market position in digital media.
Key metrics worth tracking: the trend in digital subscriptions (particularly for the Wall Street Journal and Times), the advertising revenue trajectory, and the earnings contribution from the Digital Media Services segment. Because News Corp is partly an information and media content company and partly a holder of interests in other media companies (Fox), understanding both halves is essential. The company’s capital allocation—what it invests in new digital products, how much it pays back to shareholders—signals management’s confidence in growth or acceptance of gradual managed decline.