JEFF ZUCKER'S FLEET STREET MISADVENTURE

The former CNN and NBC boss wants a new media empire. Is that even possible in 2024?

- MICHAEL WOLFF

A CLASSIC 20TH-CENTURY WAY for an outsider to achieve Establishment status has been to buy a British newspaper. From Canada, there were the outliers Max Aitken (who became Lord Beaverbrook), Conrad Black (who became Baron Black of Crossharbour—before disgrace, prison, and a presidential pardon), and the Thomson family (whose heirs became the first, second, and third Baron Thomson of Fleet); Robert Maxwell came via Czechoslovakia (and was elected a British MP—before mysterious death and disgrace); and, most dramatically, there was Rupert Murdoch from Australia. All became men of international clout and glamour by buying a piece of Fleet Street.

This was, however, in another world. Newspapers were flourishing, the U.K. was a portal to Europe and beyond, and British status was … status. Prompting the question of why Jeff Zucker, former president of CNN, former CEO of NBCUniversal, and, notoriously, one of the most grasping, tenacious, and successful players in U.S. media, would try to buy into a faded newspaper industry in a Brexit-diminished U.K., heading in the opposite direction of so many Brits in media who would do anything to work in the U.S. (a Brit, Mark Thompson, was given Zucker’s old job at CNN). It is worth noting that Zucker, in his 35-year career, in which he first achieved prominence as the 26-year-old executive producer of the Today show, had not shown much interest in print or, in fact, any evident interest in the U.K.