First he conquered the Australian newspaper market. Then he broke the back of Britain's newspaper unions. Now he wants Manhattan.
Rupert Murdoch built his career and his global media conglomerate, News Corp., by attacking opponents vulnerable to takeovers or innovation. His newest target is the biggest of them all: The New York Times, the Grey Lady of the U.S. newspaper industry, which is struggling to overcome big debts, withering revenue and declining circulation. His weapon of attack is the Wall Street Journal, the daily financial bible he paid - many say overpaid - more than $5-billion (U.S.) to acquire in 2007.
The national business paper has been reinventing itself to broaden its readership (it recently hired its first police reporter), and next week the gloves go off when the Journal launches a daily New York edition.
Under what is internally known as the New Amsterdam project, the Journal has been making plans to publish a stand alone New York section that that will feature society gossip, sports, arts, real estate and local business and politics.
Media watchers are salivating at the prospect of a clash between Mr. Murdoch, 79, and Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, 58, the latest in a long line of Ochs-Sulzberger family members who have steered the New York Times since 1896. It is new media money versus old newspaper establishment. It is News Corp., owner of the brassy New York Post tabloid and Republican-hugging Fox News heaving, against the staid, liberal-leaning New York Times, America's paper of record, which boasts the largest collection of Pulitzer Prizes and roots for Democratic President Barack Obama.
"Murdoch made it clear even before he walked into the door as an owner that he was targeting the New York Times," said Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Journal, who now heads the non-profit investigative journalism group Pro Publica Inc.
If pre-battle skirmishes are any indication, the rivalry is shaping into the kind of old-fashioned newspaper brawl that defined newspaper wars in the 1920s and 1930s.
Taking its cue from what Mr. Murdoch described in recent television interview as his "Australianism" and "love of a fight," the Journal has dropped its pinstripe reserve to hurl unusually sharp jabs at its local competitor.
The Journal's managing editor, Robert Thomson, an Australian imported by Mr. Murdoch, has sneered in recent interviews at the New York Times' corporate strategy and local reporting.
The rivalry got personal last month when the lower half of Mr. Suzlberger's face appeared in a Wall Street Journal photo composite accompanying a story about feminine men.
The stunt prompted a blog from New York media critic and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff that blared: "Murdoch to Sulzberger: you're a girly man."
Mr. Sulzberger was reportedly infuriated by the stunt, but it appears to have delighted Mr. Murdoch, who said he had no knowledge of the prank until the magazine was published.
"Oh, he should get a life," a chuckling Mr. Murdoch said of Mr. Sulzberger during a television interview earlier this month with veteran media critic Marvin Kalb.
"This is so nasty," said Edward Atorino, a media analyst with The Benchmark Company in New York.
"It's these two titans of the publishing business going at it."
The press war harkens back to another era, but the challenge for Mr. Murdoch and the Journal is very modern. The Wall Street Journal has billed itself for years as America's second paper, a circumspect digest of business news and analysis that professionals and investors should read to supplement local and political news.
The strategy makes less sense at a time when the economy is struggling and readers and advertisers are migrating to the Internet.
To be sure, the Journal has one of the strongest hands in the business. It has more than 2 million subscribers, twice that of the New York Times, and boasts one of the newspaper industry's most lucrative online news services because it charges readers for most web content.
But for all this success, the Journal has a strategic challenge. Its core business audience has limited growth potential at a time when its namesake Wall Street audience is reeling from one of the worst financial crises in decades. By going after the New York market, some observers believe the Journal hopes to broaden its online and advertising audience and further consolidate its media clout on the web.
"The Journal is a niche player. They have hit the limit of people with business accounts so they are going to try and expand the kind of people who pay for the Journal online," said Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor with Columbia University Journalism School.
Staking bigger territory online is a priority for Mr. Murdoch.
News Corp.'s London papers, The Times and Sunday Times, recently announced they will start charging online readers in June and Mr. Murdoch has targeted search engines such as Google as the enemy because they circulate newspaper stories for free on the Internet.
He is going after the New York Times at a time when it is financially vulnerable. Heavy debts forced the newspaper company to sell some of its new Manhattan office tower, it put The Boston Globe and other media and sports assets on the selling block and it turned to a Mexican telecom magnate for a $250-million injection last year.
Eyeing the New York Times' rich posted subscription rates (about $65 monthly), the Journal has signalled it is gunning for an intense price war by offering a heavily discounted subscription rate of $10 a month for the financial daily in New York City. Its object is to gain some of the Times' 827,000 New York readers, twice the Journal's local subscription base.
"What Rupert is trying to do, I think, is steal some of the New York Times' general interest audience while maintaining the Journal's business audience," said Mr. Steiger.
The Journal's Mr. Thomson gave New Yorkers a taste of what to expect for the press war when, during an interview last week with the New York Observer, he urged New York Times readers to: "cancel your subscription, read it on the Web for free and buy the Journal."