How to get ahead in the Murdoch empire, lesson #1 (repeating). Be a friend of the family or useful to an individual member. Col Allan was at The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and then at the New York Post and survived the odd bit of poor publicity and notoriety that would have flattened the career of a less favoured person, thanks to the man who had his back, Rupert Murdoch (and Lachlan Murdoch). 

And then there is Jesse Angelo, a childhood friend of James Murdoch. He is presently CEO and publisher of the New York Post, and he will now oversee a new advertising platform to give brands access to “large, high-quality audience of potential customers in a trusted environment,” according to the the release from News. Angelo will be called “Chief of Digital Advertising Solutions. Angelo will lead the platform’s development and launch. He will also continue to serve his current roles at the New York Post,” News Corp’s release said.

The ad platform is designed to sell advertising inventory across News Corp’s brands, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Mansion Global, the New York Post, News America Marketing, Checkout 51 and realtor.com. The goal of the platform is to connect digital assets across News Corp’s business units to offer advertisers a “one-stop-shopping” opportunity. The platform will launch in the US market later this year.

Angelo will report to News Corp CEO Robert Thomson. Angelo is a familiar face to the Murdoch family and is a rising figure within the News Corp ranks. Thomson called him the “ideal evangelist” for the ad community. In fact Angelo and James Murdoch got to know one another in kindergarten, so profiles of both have said. They went to Harvard together (James dropped out), and Angelo was the best man at his wedding in 2000. Angelo worked at News Corp papers in the UK and Australia (The Daily Telegraph in Sydney).

Angelo is another example of the way those close to a Murdoch can survive failure — even losing millions of a Murdoch company’s dollars (which they regard as their own). He is also the eecutive producer of Page Six TV, (the New York Post’s gossip page) which launches in fall 2017, and is on the board of Unruly, a UK video ad tech company acquired by News Corp in 2015. Truly a survivor. 

Angelo’s black mark is wasting the $US30 million Rupert gave him for The Daily. Rupert Murdoch famously said at its February 2011 New York launch that it could “completely reimagine our craft”. It was something that would make “the business of news gathering and news editing viable again.” It would usher in an era of “new journalism.” Complete crap. The Daily didn’t last and was killed off in late 2012. Angelo returned to the New York Post (where he had been executive editor) as publisher and CEO — it’s called failing upwards. — Glenn Dyer