One morning when Leela and I arrived at Murdoch’s office for another interview session, we found the 77-year-old News Corp. chairman and C.E.O. hunched over the phone reporting out a story. He’d been out the night before and gotten a tip. Now he was trying to nail it down. His side of the conversation was straight reporter stuff: Who could he call? How could he get in touch? Will they confirm? Barked, impatient, just the facts. Here was the old man, in white shirt, singlet visible underneath, doing one of the same basic jobs he’d been doing since he was 22, having inherited the Adelaide News in Australia from his father. And he was good at it. He was parsing each answer. Re-asking the question. Clarifying every point. His notepad going. He knew the trade. Of how many media-company C.E.O.’s could that be said? This wasn’t a destroyer of journalism—this was a practitioner.